1

Links to the Web sites of the i3 CI projects can be found on:http://www.i3net.org/i3projects/links.html

Information about the ESE projects can be found on:http://www.i3net.org/schools/

The choice of “Assistive Technologies” as a theme can be double-edged. On the onehand, very few people doubt the social relevance or importance of the workassociated with this label.On the other hand, there is a risk of ghetto-ising the subject:it is often viewed as a kind of “niche”, or a minority interest. Sure, we care aboutpeople with “special needs”. But is it relevant for the wider context of our research?

The fact is, of course, that technology is there to assist all of us in some way orother (or, as my seven-year-old puts it rather more nicely: “We are all a bitdisabled.”). Good technology allows people to augment the capacities andcognitive abilities they already have, whatever their strengths and weaknesses.For many people, a spell-checker is just one example of an “assistive technology”they can’t do without.

But sometimes technology can make a difference that goes way beyond thesmall irritations caused by incorrect spelling.Take the images of the boy shownon the right, a sequence from a recently started Sound Therapy project direct byPhil Ellis at the University of Sunderland. The photos tell the story of whattypically happens during a session of Sound Therapy, which was the basis of thei3 project CARESS. Children with special needs often arrive at the session as theboy appears in the first picture: listless, uninterested or unmotivated — as indeedthey often are most of the time. But Sound Therapy (which uses non-invasivetechniques) encourages them to control their movements, and the vibro-acoustic experience of sound is both pleasurable and stimulating.The results areincreased physical activity, stronger motivation, longer concentration spans andreal joy, as new ways of self-expression and communication become possible.The children, Phil Ellis writes, “open like flowers”. The picture sequence speaksfor itself.

The thematic articles in this issue all provide examples of how assistivetechnologies can enrich lives, and how they have relevance beyond particularkinds of disabilities.They also show how all the work involved started by carefullylistening to the people who will be using the technology — one of the strongfeatures of the i3 ethos.

Finding out what people need, what adds value to their lives, is not the same asdoing marketing research, finding out what makes money. This is a pointemphasised by Caroline Nevejan in the i3 interview, in which she talks about thechange and innovation that are needed at our universities. As Caroline says, it ispeople that make applications, software or the Internet flourish and work. And,in the case of universities, that means teachers are crucial. In Caroline’s words:“We can’t make changes if the teachers are not with us, if they don’t take partin shaping it.”

Spring issue: Assistive Technologies

“People” will remain central to i3, as the network continues to grow and change by adopting newmembers and new research programmes (the Disappearing Computer programme has now officiallystarted), by debating the i3 vision, and by seizing new opportunities. Apart from the i3 Spring Days,seductive as usual, two major i3 events beckon this year : the first i3 Summer School, at the brand-newIvrea Interaction Design Institute, and i3 at Orbit/Comdex Europe 2001. Keep checking the i3 web pagesfor new information: www. I3net.org

Mimo CaenepeelUniversity of Edinburghmimo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk

History - the timeline!

I was exposed to disability from early on in lifethrough contact with my disabled uncle. I startedplaying music as a teenager, and during my manyhours of practicising my bass I would sometimesgive my uncle a basic expression pedal he could putpressure on, pressure that affected the soundproduced. My uncle was unable to speak, butthrough this interaction we developed our ownform of communication which resulted in muchteasing, and laughter, and magical moments. Perhapsthis was my first ‘artless’ attempt at the creation of aplay environment for persons with a disability, whichI would later develop into the Soundscapes concept.

In the mid-eighties I was exposed to computers andbecame inspired by their potential use for themanipulation of musical synthesizers and visuals.As aresult I began to envision an environment thatwould give everybody (irrespective of ability, age orcreed) access to the manipulation of audio-visuals.And I started to work towards the creation of sucha system, accessible to all, that would enableemotional expression and sensual exploration, andwould thereby improve people’s quality of life indifferent ways, depending on their needs anddesires. The system would use technology totranslate various kinds of human input intomultimedia response or feedback (both auditoryand visual).

Over the next few years my research into this ledme to visit a wide range of institutes and centres(from Stanford University, California, to the VeteransRehabilitation Center in Palo Alto, California, to thelocal Handicapped Activity Center in Aarhus,Denmark!) where, in dialogue with various ‘special

needs’ groups, I tried to test the feasibility of myconcept. I concluded that the optimum inputinterface for my purposes would need to be able tocapture information from the human without anyinterference. The captured information would needto be of a sufficiently high resolution to feed into acomputer and give high-quality results for smoothfeedback. I envisioned that such an interface wouldbe of benefit in many ways to many people, including,but not restricted to, people with special needs.

The interface I aimed to develop had to meet anumber of challenging requirements. Wires thatwould encumber the body and restrict freedom ofmovement were not acceptable. The interface hadto be non-tangible, invisible, multi-dimensional (i.e.not just linear) and capable of capturing finiteinformation from 2 mms up to approximately 15metres. It also had to be silent, and non-dependenton room shape and decoration.

Moreover, the interface had to be able to give highdefinition data without interference and ‘crosstalk’, and to communicate the capturedinformation data to distant systems for remoteconsultation via the World Wide Web. It was alsoto be user-friendly, that is, considerate of userswho may not be too ‘technologically aware’ (suchas helpers and therapists), as well as easy-to-use,fun, and ‘human-centred’!

The resulting concept is called Soundscapes, whichstarted as a research project in the mid-eighties andhas culminated in the design and production of thePersonics sensor system.The Personics system is theleader in a new generation of sensor systems thathas been prioritised so as to make the user interfaceas easy as possible to understand and operate.The

Tony BrooksSoundscapes

Tonybrooks@soundscapes.dk

Mr BeamThe Soundscapes concept and the Personics sensor system

2

magazine

Feature

We are surrounded by the ever-widening use of technology, and the benefits and opportunities thistechnology affords are particularly apparent in the area of special needs. Tony Brooks has carried outgroundbreaking work in this (and other) area(s) for the past 15 years. His Soundscapes concept and itscurrent blueprint, the Personics sensor interface system (see shaded box on p4), both testify to Brooks’focus on the body as transmitter and receiver, and his drive to develop an optimum interface that allpeople — even the severely disabled — have creative access to.

In this article, Tony Brooks concentrates on the relevance of the technology he has developed for thespecial needs field. He starts by given a short history of his interest in the area, and recaptures how earlydreams have resulted in more recent concrete achievements.

3

sensors detect (even the smallest) body movementsin invisible light; the various output responses areboth visual and sonic, and include sounds, images,colour, vibration and lights, as well as physicalmovement from intelligent robotic units (which areoften an amplified riposte to the human input).

The system is calibrated for each participant by aspecially-trained supervisor, and the software, whichis viewed and controlled from a basic PC computer,‘remembers’ which participants are working/playingand what their preferences and capabilities are.Thecurrent prototype has a three-head array of smallbut powerful sensors that do not exhibit ‘cross talk’and operate at the ranges mentioned above (from2 mms to 15 metre).These sensors are mounted onflexible thin goosenecks that can be positioned tocapture muscle movements much smaller than mostother systems on the market are able to do.

The first prototype of the Personics system waslaunched in 1999 at the Pappagallo ProductionHouse in Aarhus, Denmark.The most recent versionwas presented this year at the 5th Scientific Congressof the Paralympic Games in Sydney (which had as itstheme Pushing the Limits: Optimising Potential ThroughScience and Technology). A commercial model of thesystem will be available next year.

Why and who for?

What makes the Personics system special? Briefly, Iwould suggest that there are three main factors.First, the data capture it affords: all it takes to affecta visual, sonic or robotic transformation is the flickerof an eyelid, the twitch of a muscle or smallmovement of the mouth. Second, the two-waycommunication between sensor and easy GUI(Graphical User Interface) on the control unit(home PC), which enables calibration and optimuminteraction for each individual; in other words, the

Snapshots from a Personics interactive disco: great legwork and the ultimate air guitar.The Personics system was setup at a local activity centre for disabled people, a rhythm was played and people at the centre were invited to joinin. Upon entering the space they found that they could affect the rhythm’s tempo and pitch by moving their bodiesthrough various interactive spaces. Image 1 shows one of the stars of the day, a woman who ‘kicked through’ various

percussive sound areas. Image 2 shows Bo from the local Activity Centre for disabled people, who discovered aspecific interactive area which enabled him to play a Hendrix-style guitar lick simply by moving his hands.

4

magazine The Personics system

The Personics system converts various kinds ofsensor input, such as physical movement, intoselected multimedia feedback.The system is usedfor entertainment, rehabilitation, disabilitiestraining, art installations, and group interaction.

The individual decides on the sensor input

Each sensor can have its own-programmedcharacteristics, and the individual using thesystem determines what kind of input to use,depending on his or her needs, goals, capabilitiesand preferences for feedback,.

Signal processing combines the sensor input

The core of the system is a package ofsophisticated electronics specially designed toread and combine various sensory signals intouseful data, which are interpreted in turn by thePersonics software system or transmitted toother digital interfaces (such as MIDI). Mucheffort is put into ensuring the flexibility of the

intelligent electronics, so that anyone can use theproduct according to his or her own capabilities.

Feedback software creates a unique multimediashow.

The signals received from the special electronicsdrive sound, graphics, lights and other devices,resulting in the creation of a multimedia show.The basic package offers choice from a set ofgraphics and sounds that can be played on a PC.Larger systems can be used to drive a myriad ofdevices such as intelligent lights, vibrationplatforms or mechanical devices. Newpossibilities are continually being developed.

The internet becomes an integral tool to expandthe potential of every aspect of the system.

Personics.net can be used to review data forrehabilitation therapy, find new graphics, sounds,program updates or the latest news on Personicsapplications, and communicate and play withother people using the system worldwide.

A sketch of the space for the Personics interactive dance space. People enter not knowing how toparticipate, but understand quickly when they put their hand (or make another kind of movement) inany of the interactive spaces.They can either enjoy their own exploration or interact with others.Thezones may give single media feedback or multiple feedback (at the points where the zones overlap).

system can be tailored to suit individualprerequisites and preferences. And thirdly, the factthat the system enables most other existing sensorsystems to ‘plug & play’— i.e. communicate —within the same environment. This built-ininterconnectivity makes it possible to enhanceexisting systems (often purchased at a high price)which can then be controlled from a standard PC.

All this increases the system’s user-friendliness. Inaddition, the control software is designed to beintuitive and easy-to-learn: it takes the user step-by-step through setting up parameters for each session,and is capable of retrieving information andpreferences relative to each individual. This way iteliminates unnecessary repetitive tasks, and ensuresthat the data is meaningful for progressive analysis.Asimple touch screen, similar to those used at ticketand information kiosks, was selected as the inputcontrol surface.

Why use this technology in special needs cases?Imagine for a moment a person whose only conduitfor expression and communication is one infinitesimalphysical gesture. The technology concerned offersnew ways to translate such a gesture into meaningfuldata that can be mapped according to the needs andpreferences of the individual.

I envisioned the technology as a home system thatwould minimize visits to a therapist 1, through theunit’s ability to send data for remote consultation viathe World Wide Web (“tele-medicine”). Theimplementation of the World Wide Web elementsallows for, amongst other things, downloadableupgrades, exchange of information, sounds, images,and so on, and access to a professional forum oftherapists and users. In short, the system can beused as a home training aid at a remote location, aswell as a recreational and communication tool. In theeveryday home environment, family members of adisabled person can encourage exercises and playwith the person and the system. The advantagesinclude less stress, fewer expenses andenvironmental benefits.

Virtual reality and human-centred technology inan ideological digital dreamland

At a conference on Virtual Reality and Persons withDisabilities, held at California State in 1992, JaronLanier, one of the most prominent spokespeople onVirtual Reality, referred to the not improbable futureuse of a form of ‘computer clothing’. Such clothing,he said, would be worn over the major sense organslocated at the surface of the skin (the ears, eye, nose,mouth and skin itself) and would be able to providea stimulus (e.g. tactile or force feedback) receivedfrom an alternative environment. The inputinformation for that alternative environment wouldoptimally be captured and transmitted through alow interference interface, to allow maximumexperiential participation and free communicationand expression. Lanier concluded that

“A little known fact is that in the history of virtualreality development, the community of researchersbuilding virtual reality machines and virtual realitysoftware has been, in many cases, almost the samecommunity as the people working on tools for thedisabled.There’s been an incredible overlap betweenthe two communities, and I think the reason for thatis very obvious: our goals are almost the same. Thegoal is to see how you can use technology and mouldit to a person, instead of asking the person to cometo the technology. Again, how do you make thingsHUMAN-Centred? And furthermore, when you work

5

Tony Brooks teaching a therapist to control the position, colourand shape of some pseudo-Olympic rings before leaving for

Sydney 2000.

with virtual reality you discover that the amount ofindividual variation between people and the waythat their senses work is pretty high; and so in thefuture, virtual reality systems will be individualizedanyway. So, in our field, I don’t know if there ever willbe a distinction between what work is for peoplewith disabilities and what isn’t. I think it’s really allpart of the same thing.”

I often wonder (when drifting into my ownideological digital dreamland!) if one day the airsurrounding my body will be capable of procuring,transmitting and receiving the necessary high-resolution data information without any impedingattachment. I speculate that such a thing may bemade possible by involving neural, physicallymodelled (sonic and visual) and other elementsrelating to synesthesia, within an environment withinteractive high-definition volumetric images. Thiswould include not only screens and projections, butalso a VIS (Virtual Interactive Space ©) of interactiveneural ions programmed to be intelligent enough totransmit and receive data relative to the body sensewith which each ion is in contact. In addition, thesystem I imagine would have the power, memoryand analytical capacity (amongst other things) toenable calibration of all relevant parameters to eachindividual participant, and act upon that data so as tooptimise the system automatically. Lanier’s computerclothing becomes Brooks’ ion skin!

We haven’t reached that stage yet. But the currentPersonics prototype sensor system already allowsfor non-tactile navigation of vir tual realityenvironments through small gestures or bodymovements, and enables participants to paint, playmusic, create audio-visual environments and playgames through input as minimal as the flicker of aneyelid, the twitch of a muscle, or even a breath.

Research continues into the use of the Personicssystem in education and in learning-aid environments.I also continue my own ongoing exploration ofsynesthesia relative to the new technologies. Muchwork remains to be done. But on the basis of myown experiences and research so far, I stronglybelieve that many people stand to gain from the useof this technology, both within and beyond the fieldof special needs.

1 You may already have noticed that there is no mention of the ‘T’word (‘therapy’) in this article.This is deliberate: the whole conceptof Soundscapes was built around the notion of ‘play’ rather than‘therapy’, because we observed that in some sessions the meremention of the word ‘therapy’ would lower the energy — andhence the input — of some (verbally sensitive) participants. Thiswas no longer the case if we used the word ‘play’.

6

magazine

Tony Brooks is a visionary performing andconceptual ar tist and researcher. He haspresented his work at numerous internationalconferences and events during the past 15 years,and lectures widely at universities, colleges andinstitutes worldwide. Brooks’ work is currentlybeing researched at the Center for Brain Injury,Copenhagen, and at the Center for AdvancedVisualization and Interactivity at AarhusUniversity, Denmark. Brooks is involved in twoEuropean projects that use his system. He hasjust been awarded a grant of 12 M DKK (1,6 MEuro) for further research at the Brain InjuryInstitute, Copenhagen University.

The first Personics Sensor System is scheduledfor limited release in February 2001.

For more information on the Personics system:

http://www.personics.net

Tony Brooks will be demonstrating the Personicssystem at his workshop at the i3 Spring Days on24 April 2001 in Porto. For more information, see

http://www.dfki .de/ imedia/workshops/ i3-spring01/w11-info.html

7

Previous work

Although games development based on 3-D audiointerfaces is currently extremely limited, research(e.g. Lumberas and Sánchez 1998) has shown thatblind children can interact with a computer using a 3-D audio interface. Another study into audiointerfaces (Mereu and Kazman, 1996) found that ablind person using a 3-D audio interface can locate apoint in 3-D space as accurately as a sighted personusing a graphical interface (although the time takenby the blind person is significantly longer).The samestudy also found that in a sound-only environment,visually impaired users are very much more accuratethan sighted users. Other research (Cooper andTaylor, 1998) further substantiates the effectivenessof 3-D audio environments. Building on thesefindings, our aim has been to investigate whether theconcepts of traditionally visual computer games canbe successfully translated into a 3-D audioenvironment, thereby making the games marketaccessible to children with visual impairments.

Audio Space Invaders

The Audio Space invaders game we have developedis a shoot ‘em up-style of game, based on a futuristicspace adventure of the kind that is currently very

popular with the teenage gaming community. Inkeeping with the tradition of such games, our AudioSpace Invaders incorporates a number of scenariolevels, each based on a player fighting againstdifferent types of enemy ships. Each ship type has adefined life span that is automatically set to a certainvalue when the ship is created, and decreased everytime it is shot.When the ‘life’ of a ship reaches zerothe ship is destroyed. The ships also have differentvelocities, directions of attack, flight patterns andfiring rates.

The scenarios are of increasing difficulty and arepresented to the player in sequence, each beingintroduced by a mission briefing, both audible andtextual, by ‘Molly’, a female robot companion. Mollyinstructs the user as to what to do, and what thedangers are, at each level of the game. She also offerswords of encouragement at the end of a mission andgives the user a sense of continuity throughout thegame. The player scores points by shooting enemyships and completing the mission objectives, and thegame is complete when the player has completedthe final mission.A total score enables players to ratethemselves against each other. Scenario levels areinitially set with default values, but each scenario canbe customised (using the Level Editor supplied withthe game) to adjust the complexity of the game to

Rachel McCrindleUniversity of Readingr.j.mccrindle@reading.ac.uk

David SymonsUniversity of Readingd.r.symons@reading.ac.uk

Feature

Levelling the playing fieldCreating computer games for blind children

Digital technologies such as multimedia, virtual reality, digital video broadcasting, and the World Wide Webhave been the subject of intense development over recent years. Coupled with the continually decreasingcosts of the enabling technologies, this has resulted in significant expansion of their use. One such areaof expansion is the home entertainment industry, and in particular the video games market — to theextent that almost all children play computer games these days, with many families having a homecomputer or a dedicated games console such as the Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast or Sony Playstation 2.

Many of these games involve the use of computer graphics to navigate a fantasy world, and as a result thegraphical technology of computer games has become very advanced and sophisticated. But the audiocomponent is often mediocre and tends to be used only to add to the realism of a game, rather than toassist playing it.This can leave blind and partially sighted children feeling set apart from their peers, as theyare unable to participate.

Advances are underway in various areas to promote disabled uptake of new technology, for instance ofthe web, via inclusive design and assistive technologies such as Braille displays, screen readers andmagnifiers (see e.g.W3C, 2000). However, very little emphasis has been placed so far on making the gamesmarket accessible to all. With this in mind we have combined audio and visual interfaces with forcefeedback joystick movement to produce a space-invader type of game that can be played by both sightedand non-sighted users.To achieve this, and in contrast to traditional games development, we based thedesign of our Audio Space Invaders game primarily around a 3-D surround sound environment, with thegraphical interface being added later. The optional force feedback controls further enhance the playingexperience of the game.

suit different age groups and levels of experience, orto create new challenges.

Interface and interaction

The Audio Space Invaders game is based on a 3-Daudio environment which represents themovement and position of the game componentsthrough sound. To convey an effect that is asrealistic as possible this environment ideallyconsists of a four-speaker surround sound set-up;but, with cost in mind, the environment has beendesigned in such a way that it also works perfectlyadequately with sound cards that only support twospeakers or headphones.

For further ease of use, instructions and clues as towhat is happening are given audibly, and interactionwith the game has been made as simple as possiblethrough the use of either a keyboard or joystick.Thekeyboard replicates a number of basic controls (up,down, left, right and fire), whilst the joystick enablesmore sophisticated interaction with the game, forexample allowing the user to shoot and move at thesame time. The use of an optional force feedbackjoystick provides extra information and clues to thegame situation; for instance, the players can feelwhen they are firing shots or are being shotthemselves. In a future version the player may alsobe guided through certain events as part of thetraining mechanism. This extra information can beespecially useful at higher levels of the game, when

several activities occur simultaneously and a varietyof different sounds are being produced.

Although the Audio game does not require a graphicalinterface for playing purposes, we have included onefor a number of reasons. Firstly, to provide a morenatural mode of interaction for sighted users; secondly,to provide a training mechanism for both sighted andnon-sighted users; and thirdly, to provide acomparative test bed for research into humancomputer interaction issues across sighted and non-sighted communities. The graphical interface can beturned off completely if desired.

Game features

Figure 1 shows a number of screens from level 2 ofthe game. The scenario opens with Molly alertingthe player that an attack is about to begin. She givesinformation about the player’s position as well as thedirection of the incoming ships. Quadrants 2 and 3show snapshots of the game in progress: quadrant 2shows an approaching wave of ships, whilst quadrant3 shows a ship that has flown over the player. ADoppler effect is applied to the sound, whichconveys the effect of ships flying towards or awayfrom the player ; this effect, which also occurs innormal life, increases the pitch of the sound of anobject as it approaches and decreases the pitch as itmoves away. The player life and their score, whichare given in the left and right hand corners of thescreen respectively, can also be accessed audibly by

8

magazine

Figure 1.Snapshots of level-2 to show missioninstructions, game

in play anddebriefing.

9

Figure 3. Difficult visual interface.

Figure 2. Consistent look and feel but increasing complexity.

10

pressing a keyboard control key. Once the missionhas been successfully completed, Molly gives anencouraging debrief to the players, as shown inquadrant 4.

Scenario levels 3 to 6 take place on different planetsand involve increasingly complex flight patterns forthe enemy ships, as well as shorter player life-spans,more powerful ships and so on. However, they allpurposely incorporate a similar look-and-feel.This isillustrated in Figure 2, which shows screen shotstaken from level-4.

Another ‘twist-in-the-tail’ for pitting blind playersagainst sighted players is that as the levels becomeprogressively more difficult, the degree of graphicalhelp for sighted players is decreased by making theplanets very dark, so that it becomes harder todetect the approach of enemy ships by visual means.Figure 3 illustrates this.

The game can be played using audio and visualinformation, either in combination or separately.

A series of menus, instruction files and other typesof feedback, such as game statistics, have also beenincorporated. Some of these are shown in Figure 4.

Testing

We have been testing the game throughout itsdevelopment and have made a number ofimportant observations. In particular, we found that

newcomers to the game often found it hard to gettheir bearings in the audio world to begin with.Witha little practice, however, they were soon able tolocate and shoot the enemy ships. In this respect, thegraphical interface proved a useful trainingmechanism even for non-sighted users, since withthe help of a sighted friend they were able tounderstand where the sounds were coming fromand what they represented.

Other interesting results relate to the type ofsounds and general play that are most effective. Forinstance, we found that

• sounds with a smooth varying pitch are verydifficult to locate, as they give the impression thatthe sounds are moving when in fact they are not;

• sounds that change can be located as long as thechange is quite harsh. For example, a helicopter’spropellers or some other sort of machine areeasy to locate, whereas a siren sound is not;

• in the case of more than two sounds, the quieteror less distinguishable sounds become maskedand are hard to hear until objects making thelouder sounds are destroyed;

• two or more sounds which are the same or verysimilar are also difficult, although not impossible,to locate,

magazine

Figure 4.Introductory andsummary screens.

While we have shown that the concepts oftraditional computer games can be transferred to anaudio environment, we have restricted evaluation sofar to a small ad-hoc group of users. Now that wehave achieved this, more extensive and formalevaluations of the Audio Space Invader game arebeing arranged, both in the UK and abroad. Resultsfrom these evaluations will be used to improve theAudio Space Invaders and to adapt the developmentof subsequent games.

Other games and research

We realise that “shoot ‘em up” games, whilst popularwith young people, are not to everyone’s liking, andwe are also working on several other types of audiogames, such as those linked to Formula-1 racingstrategy situations and more traditional boardgames.We are also looking to transfer what we havelearned from people’s interaction with the 3-Daudio games into universal design of interfaces formore general computing purposes. Other recent orcurrent projects linked to accessibility include:

• Multimedia Interface for the Disabled (MIND), aproject which concerns the implementation andsynchronisation of multimedia elements tocompensate for visual, aural or motor impairment(McCrindle and Adams 1998);

• SignPlus, which was developed to assist theteaching of sign language to both deaf and non-deaf children, and to motivate and enhance theirlearning experience through the combination ofvarious multimedia component types. A project isalso underway to develop software that willtranslate written and subsequently spoken Englishinto British Sign Language through computeranimation techniques (McCrindle 1999);

• The Vir tual Bodies Project (VBP), which isconcerned with producing Next GenerationIntelligent Agents to help both abled-bodied anddisabled people interact with their desktop and,when registered with a central server, to interactwith each other across the Internet. Oncecomplete, the VBP agents will be fully customisableby the user in terms of the way they look, sound,respond to a user’s requirements, and interact withother agents (McCrindle and Hill, 2001);

• The Virtual Reality Safety Project (VRSP), whichhas been designed to assist the teaching of safetyin the home to young and inexperienced parents.The package may also be of value in teachingpeople with learning difficulties, for rehabilitationpurposes after a brain injury, or for highlighting

specific difficulties to people with limited mobility.Interactive multimedia within thematic scenariosis also being used as a means of developing keyskills in young children (McCrindle 1999);

• A number of commercial projects addressingthe inclusive design and development ofinterfaces for computer screens and ITequipment are also underway.

References

Cooper, M. and Taylor, M.E. (1998) Ambisonic Sound in VirtualEnvironments and Applications for Blind People. In: Proceedings ofthe 2nd European Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality andAssociated Technologies, 1998 pp.113-118

Lumberas, M. and Sánchez, J. (1998) 3D Aural Interactive HyperStories for Blind Children. In: Proceedings of the 2nd EuropeanConference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies,1998 pp.119-128

McCrindle, R, J.,The Impact of New and Distributed Technologies onDisabled Users, In:Proceedings of the European Workshop on DistributedImaging, 21/1-21/8, November 18th-19th, London, UK, 1999.

McCrindle, R.J. and Adams, R.M., Multimedia Interface for theDisabled (MIND) Project. In: The International Journal of VirtualReality,Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.35-44, 1998

McCrindle, R.J. and Hill, S.,The Virtual Bodies Project, Draft Paper, 2001

McCrindle, R.J. and Symons, D.R., Audio Space Invaders, In:Proceedings 3rd International Conference on Disability, Virtual Realityand Associated Technologies, ICDVRAT 2000, Sardinia, Italy, pp. 59-65,23-25, September, 2000

Mereu, S. and Kazman, R (1996) Audio Enhanced 3D Interfaces forVisually Impaired Users, In: Proceedings of CHI ‘96, ACM Press

W3C (2000),Web Accessibility Initiative, http://www.w3.org/WAI/

11

Rachel McCrindle is a lecturer in the Department ofComputer Science at the University of Reading. Shespecialises in software engineering, user interface designand interaction, and multimedia technology. She alsoconsults on issues related to designing of computersystems and IT equipment for the elderly and peoplewith disabilities.

David Symons is a recent graduate of The University ofReading and is now working for the University as aTeaching Company Associate. He is also studying part-time for a PhD in the area of Digital Video Broadcasting.

Details about Audio Space Invaders and the otherprojects mentioned in this article can be found onRachel’s web site: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sssmccri

12

magazine

Office work involves many practical tasks that aredifficult for people with a motion impairment. Evenif the disability is slight or temporary, the fact thatsomeone uses crutches, for instance, makes itimpossible for them to carry books, stacks ofpaper or even a cup of coffee across the corridor.In fact, this need for assistance applies to anyonewhose arms are busy.

This situation is the focus of a current project atIPLab, entitled “Fetch-and-carry-robot forfunctionally disabled people in working life”. Ouridea was to develop a small, easy-to-use mobileunit that could assist a person in an ordinary officeby transporting everyday objects within the localenvironment. We were particularly interested inhow an intuitive and transparent user interactionwith such a unit could be designed.

Little previous research in robotics has beendirected at interaction design.There is a tradition ofwork in rehabilitation robotics, but the problems oftemporarily or moderately disabled people areseldom addressed. For our part, it was important todeal with needs that could arise for anyone in aworkplace, and to consider solutions that couldinvolve a whole group and not just a singleindividual.

Together with our sponsors from the NationalLabour Market Board and the robotics researchgroup at our department, we formulated thefollowing initial requirements for the robot:

• It should operate on a standard platform and bebased on robust, existing technology. The robotshould move on wheels and have nomanipulators (arms etc.) As a consequence, itwould be dependent on humans for loading andunloading. The motivation for this requirementwas that grasping and manipulating arbitraryobjects is not yet a stable technology in robotics.Initially, a metaphor of “an autonomous teatrolley” was suggested.

• The interface design should be transparent andeasy to understand for both experienced and newusers.This is necessary because an office is an openenvironment, and there is often more than oneperson involved in everyday transportation tasks.

Two basic ways of operating the robot wereconsidered: (1) the robot independently goes to aspecified location for collection or delivery of anobject; (2) the robot follows the user around the officeto assist with fetching and delivering objects. Becauseof technical constraints, the current prototype of therobot only operates in the first mode.

In the design of the robot, we have employed a user-centred methodology, collecting different types ofinformation relevant to the situation of use, anditeratively feeding it into the development process.We have conducted interviews with a group ofdisabled office workers and used focus groups toyield an informal task analysis. A simulation studyaccording to the Wizard-of-Oz paradigm precededthe development of the user interface, and gaveimportant input into the design.At present, we havea working prototype that is being evaluated withusers in a semi-realistic office environment.

Interfacing mobile artifacts

There are a number of challenges in designinghuman interaction with a mobile robot. The userneeds to control the robot both in direct contactand when it is out of sight.While in the same roomwith the robot, the user may be moving aroundaway from her desk, and cannot be expected tocarry a computer or even a remote control unit.Thisled to the decision to use speech as one of theprimary interface modalities.

On the other hand, there are situations when theuser is stationary at her PC, and perhaps needs touse the robot while performing other computertasks. Therefore a graphical user interface was seenas a natural complement. This may also be used tosupport additional parts of user interaction, such as

Kerstin Severinson Eklundh, Royal Institute of Technology

kse@nada.kth.se

Anders Green Royal Institute of Technology

green@nada.kth.se

Helge HüttenrauchRoyal Institute of Technology

hehu@nada.kth.se

Feature

Body languageCERO: an assistive agent for fetch-and-carry tasksin office environments

13

customization, status information and errorrecovery. The two interfaces must use a commonvocabulary as far as possible, and it should be easyfor the user to switch between them.

Wizard-of-Oz simulation

During simulation trials, users were allowed to speakfreely to the robot to instruct it. A ‘wizard’ had beentrained to control the robot’s movements andgenerate dialogue responses. The results showed agreat variability in the users’ communication style,which partly reflected the novelty of the situation. Afrequent observation was that users appeared to beconfused with regard to the robot’s state,particularly whether it had received their instructionand whether it was heading towards the desireddestination. This was apparent from the users’physical and spatial orientation to the robot: theyoften monitored its movements closely to seewhere it was going.

One main conclusion from this was that clear andexplicit feedback to the user is needed on severallevels in the human-robot interface. Such feedbackmay be partly verbal, but other means of displayingthe robot’s state and direction were also looked for.

CERO: a transportation agent as a “graceful driver”

Many discussions in the design team centeredaround the central metaphor for interaction withthe robot.This was also an important input into thephysical design. Should the robot be given apersonal, somewhat human-like appearance? Orshould the image be one of the robot as a neutraltransportation device? In the history of robotics,fantasies of an animated human robot persona haveoften been expressed, but these images did notseem applicable to our use situation.We wanted toconvey to the user the sense of a friendly andreliable transportation agent, which gives a clearindication of where it is going and which is availablefor smooth interaction in a conversational mode.

CERO, the Co-operative Embodied Robot Operator has four servos that arecontrolled using a microprocessor.The design without eyes reflects the fact

that the robot has no vision capabilities. Placed upon the robot platform, thebody and the face give the user a sense of direction.

Wizard-of-Oz

Designers of computer systems often like to be able totest the suitability of a proposed interface design beforegoing to the expense of actually constructing it. In aWizard-of-Oz study, a prospective user is fooled intothinking they are working with an actual computersystem; in reality, a human ‘wizard’ is manipulating theinterface in response to the user’s tests, using a protocolwhich describes how the system would respond if itwere built.

14

magazine

The CERO-doll is placed on the robot’s frontto give the user a sense of direction.The

loudspeaker and the microphone are placedbeneath and to the right of CERO.The

antenna to the left provides wireless access tothe local network of the office.

The solution that we have chosen is based on a newmetaphor, consisting of a transportation platformand a “driver”. The driver represents the robot’spersonality and intelligence and provides a focus forinteracting with it.To embody this idea we created aphysical character, CERO (Cooperative EmbodiedRobot Operator), with a simple body language ofarm and head movements. In this way, feedback canbe given on the user’s requests, complementing thespeech output from the system. The CEROcharacter can be used to display the robot’s state,but it also gives a clear direction for the robot andhelps the user orient to it during interaction.

Natural interaction with the CERO agent

A flexible spoken language dialogue has beendesigned for the fetch-and-deliver scenario. Thedialogue is designed to ensure mutualunderstanding, while giving the user several optionsfor how to approach and instruct the robot.

In the following example, the robot acknowledgesthe user’s request by reformulating it as a question.This is affirmed by the user, which has the effect thatthe robot starts on the mission.The gestures of theCERO character provide simultaneous feedback onthe robot’s status.

User: robot, get coffee in the kitchen!

CERO: (displays gesture of attention)

Robot: get coffee in the kitchen?

User: yes, please

Robot: going to get getting coffee in the kitchen!

(robot starts moving)

We are exploring ways of providing non-intrusivecommunicative feedback at different points in aspoken dialogue. This includes both conversationalfeedback, providing reactions to the user’scommands, and co-expressive conventional gestures(e.g. emblems: nod, shake head, call for the user’sattention…).

In the graphical interface, the environment and therobot itself are depicted in such a way that the usercan follow the robot’s movements. The CEROcharacter is visible in a corner, and is animated togive feedback while a transportation mission isactivated.The user instructs the robot by using drop-down menus with words reminiscent of the spokencommand language. It is also possible to interrupt amission and obtain system information.

The robot platform is a NomadicSuper Scout II, extended with a

specially designed top including atransportation compartment.

15

User reactions

We have begun to evaluate the system with users inrealistic tasks.The results have shown that the modelfor human robot interaction using speech and anartificial character is a viable alternative to theportrayal of the robot as neutral transportappliance.The general design of the robot, with theCERO-doll and a multi-modal way of operation, hasbeen well received by the users. The menu-basedgraphical user interface is familiar to the user’s(interface?) and thus supports the exploration of therobot’s functionality, while the speech interfacerequires some training but enables interactionwithout the use of a graphical display.

Conclusions and future work

The process of designing a human-robot interfacefor people with transportation needs is a new andchallenging area for HCI and interaction design. Ourwork has been guided by goals of simplicity andnaturalness for the user, but also by constraints ofexisting technology in terms of robot platforms,available sensors and processing power.

In future work, we hope to extend the robot’scommunicative capacity and to explore further thesocial and collaborative aspects of sharing anintelligent transportation agent in a workplace. Wesee the CERO agent as the first component of anintelligent physical environment with support forpeople’s everyday tasks in a workplace.

References

Green,A., Hüttenrauch, H., Oestreicher, L., Severinson Eklundh, K., &Norman, M. User-centered design for intelligent service robots. InProceedings of Ro-Man’2000, Osaka, Japan. Also available as ReportIPLab-173, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Acknowledgements

This work has benefited greatly from collaboration with industrialdesigner Erik Espmark, who created an interesting appearance forthe CERO character and provided us with sound principles leadingto the robot’s exterior design.

We thank our colleagues at the CAS research centre, in particularprofessor Henrik Christensen, for valuable assistance and forpermission to use their sonar navigation system in the CERO robot.

The research presented here has been supported by the SwedishLabour Market Board (AMS), and the Swedish Foundation forStrategic Research (SSF) through the Graduate School for Human-Machine Interaction.

In a public place, the robot attractsattention and positive reactions.

Kerstin Severinson Eklundh is a professor ofhuman-computer interaction at the RoyalInstitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. She ishead of the Interaction and PresentationLaboratory, an interdisciplinary environment forhuman-computer interaction research andeducation, established in the mid-80’s. One of thecurrent research areas at IPLab is “Humaninteraction with intelligent service robots”, acollaborative venture with CAS (The Centre forAutonomous Systems) at KTH.

Anders Green and Helge Hüttenrauch are PhDstudents in the human-robot interaction group.

IPLab URL: http://www.nada.kth.se/iplab/

CAS URL: http://www.nada.kth.se/cas/

16

Can computer-supported multimedia applicationsbe of therapeutic benefit for severely disabledchildren? What is the potential of such anapproach, and what are its limitations? These arethe questions that guide the research project CATI(Computer-Aided Therapeutic Intervention).

Part of the research carried out in the context ofCATI consists in conducting case studies indifferent special needs settings.This article focuseson one of these case studies, which involved arttherapy sessions for a severely physically disabledboy. Because the boy in question required constantand intensive care, the possibilities for interactionbetween him and his environment were verylimited, and this led to emotional disturbances.Thecase study aimed to investigate whether acomputer-assisted multimedia environment issuitable for mediating facets of “authentic” reality(reality as most people commonly experience it),and whether it can support the therapeuticprocess through fostering a stronger connectionbetween the child and its surroundings. The arttherapy sessions in the case study involved the useof a multimedia environment consisting ofvideoclips, photographs and standard software fordesigning multimedia artwork.

The case

The boy taking part in the case study is 11 years oldand suffers from centronuclear myopathy. Thiscondition leads to the loss of muscular strength ofthe entire skeletal apparatus, thereby also affectingrespiration, and as a result the boy needs to beconnected to an artificial respiratory device almostall the time. He is able to sit up in a wheelchair andcan control his forearm as well as his hands, butthese tire rather fast due to the loss of muscularstrength.The boy’s cognitive abilities are not affectedby his disability.

The boy spent the first seven years of his life in theintensive care ward of a children’s hospital, until hewas physically stable enough to live at home forshorter periods of time. Due to the severity of hisdisability his mobility is restricted, and he has hadvery little social contact outside his family. Because ofthis he has developed an understanding of reality

that is strongly influenced by the media he wasexposed to during his childhood years (video films,audio cassettes, books and games based on comicstrip stories… ).

The boy still very much identifies with the heroes ofthese stories, and his thinking is dominated by thecharacters encountered. This has an effect on hiscommunicative behaviour — for instance, heexpresses happiness in the same way the comic stripfigure Benjamin Blümchen (an elephant) would do: bytrumpeting “Thöröh!”.These kinds of things make itdifficult for others to communicate with him,because conversation requires a shared ground forcommunication.To develop a more appropriate wayof communicating, it is crucial that the boy deals with(aspects of) life as people commonly experience it.

Theoretical background of the art therapy setting

Children usually develop an understanding of theworld around them by interaction. For the boy inthe case study, the possibilities for physical and socialinteraction with his environment are very limited.Yetinteraction inevitably happens, and in the case of theboy it is, for compensatory reasons, largely restrictedto the world of the imagination. Could computer-supported multimedia environments offer analternative compensatory interface (AATA 1999)?While the aspects of reality mediated through suchenvironments would still be acquired on anemotional level different from that of non-disabledchildren, it could nevertheless offer a more authenticexperience which allows for more sharedcommunicative ground with the outside world, andbe of therapeutic benefit in this way.

In distinction to augmented reality systems, whichare designed to enrich the real world with acomplementary virtual world (Bajura and Neumann1995), we define “authentic reality mediation” as thecomputer-supported presentation of empirical parts ofwhat we commonly refer to as “reality”.The empiricalparts start off from the “artificial” notion of realitythe child has developed and connect them withevents occuring in the “real” world. Findings fromLearning Theory as well as concepts from arttherapy support the validity of this concept.

Henrike GappaGMD-German National

Research Center forInformation Technologyhenrike.gappa@gmd.de

magazine

Feature

Connecting the inner withthe outer worldUsing multimedia software in art therapy

17

Learning Theory, as advocated by the constructionistSeymour Papert, puts particular emphasis on thepower computers which provide children withmicroworlds they can “play with”, have in supportingthe process of knowledge construction. Papert alsostresses the importance of constructing artifacts witha “public” character (Papert 1991) — in our case themultimedia art work created by the child.This publiccharacter offers the opportunity to communicateindividual knowledge to others; and to look at theartifact — and thereby indirectly at the internalizedknowledge structures — from different perspectives.This procedure involves addressing cognitive as wellas affective processes that are crucial for connectingold knowledge with new knowledge (Kafai andMitchel 1996). The importance of enabling affectiveand cognitive experiences for connecting the innerwith the outer world lies at the basis of art therapyfor personal development.

According to Richter (Richter 1994), the founder ofthe educational branch of ar t therapy(“Pädagogische Kunsttherapie”), “therapy” means theinitiation and guidance of processes of social learningin order to reconstruct underdeveloped skills, byactivating the individual in a specially-structurededucational environment. In this context, the notionof educational regression plays an important role: itrefers to the (re-)construction of skills in dealingwith aesthetic materials and operations inaccordance with the age of a child and thedevelopmental stage it is at when a developmentaldeviation is diagnosedThe therapeutic goal is tofoster an age-appropriate use of symbolic functions,something which becomes apparent in the aestheticprocess and its product.

Therapeutic setting

During his last stay at the children’s hospital, the boybecame acquainted with the graphics programCorel Draw which ran on the PC on his ward. Heeasily learned how to handle the program anddesigned sophisticated images. Powerpoint was alsoinstalled, to allow him to design interactive storiesand incorporate sounds and videoclips.

A collection of the boy’s “hand-made” images werescanned in and offered to him. At first he enrichedthese images only with sounds, but very soon afterhe began to create new images during his arttherapy sessions. The ease with which he couldproduce images with a computer, particularlycompared to all the effort it takes for him to drawwith crayons, released energy in him whichmotivated him to explore further.

In the boy’s “hand-made” images the forms he uses,for instance to draw trees, are very much the same— they differ only in size (see figure 1); this isbecause his creative energy is absorbed by themotorical effort it takes him to draw. But creatingpictures with the computer enabled him toexperiment with different shapes for trees, and toproduce more comprehensive pictures, for instanceby adding a sun and clouds (see figure 2).

Figure 1: An example of a “handmade” image: shapes are very similar, onlytheir size varies.

Figure 2: A computer image of the same scene: different shapes are used,more elements are added, and the drawing incorporates a sense of

perspective.

18

Most importantly, it freed cognitive capacity tosearch for symbols expressing more differentiatedobservations, like visual perspective (for instance thelines in figure 2 connecting the trees in differentrows, adding depth to the picture) and emotions(for instance the underwater world in figure 3, whichis presented in “X-ray” format, with the water beingsymbolized not as waves but rather as an aquarium;or the dynamic of the palm leaves moved by thewind in the same figure).

The boy designed several images which talked ofhow his day passes by, and the next obvious stepwas to connect these images into a story. Theimages were further enriched by sounds fromnature (birds, thunder and lightning…), and byphotographs offered of aspects of his day-to-dayreality to the boy (such as the garbage truck thatpassed the house he was staying in). Whenconfronted with realistic photographs previously, theboy had not shown much interest in them andpreferred to talk about one of his Sega games. Butwhen studying the photograph of the garbage truckstopping in the street, for instance, he decided thatthe road signs were missing, and started to drawthem on the computer. So a pre-verbal dialoguewould take place in the process of developing anartifact, which would later become the basis ofverbal, age-appropriate communication, in this caseabout the purpose of road signs, traffic, people andthe like.

magazine

Figure 3: Underwater world

Figure 4: Flashes of lightning.The hand symbolindicates a branch to another object

19

Findings

So what did we learn from this case study? First ofall, it became clear during the art therapy sessionsthat enabling a disabled person to create imagesempowers them with a sense of mastery andcontrol that fosters feelings of self-esteem. One ofthe great advantages of using computer images inthis context is that they can be changed easily andtherefore allow for plenty of exploration andexperimentation, since all steps can be undonewithout leaving a trace.

We also observed that creating a multimediaartwork, by enriching images with sound, videoclips,animation and branching options, facilitatesnetworking processes in knowledge building. Theartwork comprises different aspects of a certainobject (for instance the sound and the animated fastmovement of a weasel) and is constructed as anhypertext presentation, which forces its creator tolook at the cognitive structures it incorporates. As isindicated by the hand symbol in Figure 4, the viewercan branch from a sensitive object on the screen (inthis case the flash of lightning) to another objectpresenting more information on this topic (in thiscase a photograph of a tree struck by lightnings,accompanied by the sound of thunder and lightning).

In short, our observations make it reasonable toassume that a computer is a meaningful tool forconstructing knowledge about reality from alearning as well as a psychological perspective.

We are currently applying what we have learned tothe development of a methodology design thatallows us to observe what happens when a child isgiven a multimedia environment for exploring realitythat involves the avatar of a protagonist (such as ananimal or a comic strip figure) defined andcontrolled by the child itself.

References

AATA (Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art TherapyAssociation) (1999) 16, 4

Bajura, M. and Neumann, U. (1995): Dynamic Registration andCorrection in Augmented Reality Systems. In: Proceedings VRAIS´95 (Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium). IEEE ComputerSociety Press, Los Alamitos, CA, p. 189-196

Kafai, Y. and Mitchel, R. (eds.) (1996): Constructionism in Practice.Designing, Thinking and Learning in a Digital World. LawrenceErlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, p. 25-37

Papert, S. (1991): Situating Constructionism. In: Harel, I. & Papert, S.(eds.): Constructionism. Ablex Corporation, Norwood, NJ, p. 1-13

Richter, H. (1984): Pädagogische Kunsttherapie. Schwann-Verlag,Düsseldorf

CATI: (Computer-Aided Therapeutic Inter-vention) is an assistive technology approachproject of the Human-Computer Interactiongroup of the Institute for Applied InformationTechnology (FIT) at the German NationalResearch Center for Information Technology(GMD). The project is part of the TEDIS(Technological Enabling of Disabled and OlderPeople) project group, which Henrike Gappajoined in 1996. Within the TEDIS project,Henrike is mainly concerned with designing andevaluating learning environments for childrenwith special needs, implemented as part of theCATI project.

More information on GMD:

http://www.gmd.de/

On FIT:

http://fit.gmd.de/about/

On TEDIS:

http://access.gmd.de/

On CATI

http://access.gmd.de/index.phtml?lng=de&style=4&content=projects

20

An adult at rest usually breathes effortlessly at arespiratory rate of approximately sixteen breathsper minute.The sensation of breathing is rarely feltconsciously, unless there is a reason for this. Butfor some people, breathing patterns tie in withconditions such as hyperventilation, panic attacksand asthma. Marilyn Lennon describes how herown experience of asthma, and her interest intechnology that enhances the user’s quality of life,have involved her in the development of a devicethat can make a difference (and is fun to play withas well):Visibreath.

I developed asthma a couple of years ago. Over timeI have learned to manage this condition successfullyby developing an awareness of how I breathe andmaking adjustments accordingly.Amazingly, one in 25children in Ireland has asthma, and this is a commonstatistic throughout the world!

Can people with asthma be helped by technology? Atthe Interaction Design Centre (University of Limerick)I was well-placed to ask this question, since one of thecentre’s main foci is on developing new digitalsolutions which take into account the end users’needs. In the context of my MSc project, my personalexperience and research interests converged in thedevelopment of Visibreath.The idea was to develop atool that can teach children to control, manipulate orcommunicate how they breathe.

Such a tool could give children with asthma the skillsneeded to manage their condition. But research inthe field of Biofeedback suggests that we may be ableto do even more than that to enhance the quality oflife of someone with asthma. Studies of theassociations between respiration and illnesses suchas phobic avoidance, panic attacks, hyperventilationand asthma provide substantial evidence to suggestthat voluntary control of certain respiratoryvariables can modify a person’s level of suffering.Thishas important implications for treatments which usebreathing techniques to create awareness of, andenhance voluntary control of, respiration.Researchers in the field believe that new patterns ofbreathing may grow to be automatic through aprocess of conditioning over a period of time, andthat techniques could be developed accordingly fora variety of respiratory disorders (Baar) (Bass andGardner 1985). However, in the past professionalsand parents have found it difficult to engage childrenin the repetitive activities involved in learning suchtechniques, without some incentive.

Ideally learning the relevant techniques should besufficiently engaging to produce a state of mindwhich Mihali Csikszentmihalvi calls “flow” — anemotional experience that arises from performingan activity so gratifying that people are willing to doit for its own sake (Csikszentmihalvi 1992). Indesigning VisiBreath we felt it was important todevelop an activity that produced this sense ofengagement in children, while at the same timeteaching them something useful about themselves.

In developing the Visibreath I had the unusualperspective, or “double vision”, of being both userand designer. But the project also required thecollaboration of those with the physical perspectiveand the understanding of “flow” of an eight-year-old.The co-designers/collaborators did not need tobe asthmatics, but as it happened two of them were(in addition to myself). So, with the collaboration ofsix children between the ages of seven and nine, auser-centred and iterative design developmentprocess was used to develop the first stageprototype of VisiBreath.

The effectiveness of the prototype has since beenevaluated, using co-operative and surveymethodologies, by a further ten children. I can

Marilyn LennonUniversity of Limerick

marilynlennon@hotmail.com

magazine

A new spirit of interactionVisibreath

Figure 1: Children are co-designers and collaborators in the development

of Visibreath.

21

already see that my own ideas are shaped by the“informed intuition” of an adult: the children werequick to point to all sorts of preconceptions andflaws in the design (see figure 1).

The current input device is a simple tube throughwhich the user inhales or exhales. However, thechildren have discussed and drawn up designsinvolving different shapes, colours, sizes and weights.The device has been designed to plug directly into aPC, since it was decided quite early in itsdevelopment that it should be for domestic use andreach as many people as possible. The design isrobust and could be manufactured very cheaply.

The screen shows an imaginary landscape acrosswhich a river meanders, creating a path along whicha ship must navigate (see figure 2). The ship entersthe scene and proceeds across the centre in astraight line, unless it is interrupted by input from theflow sensor. Exhalation pushes the ship upwards andinhalation pulls it downwards. The player tries tokeep the ship within the banks of the river byinhaling and exhaling at appropriate times. Aroundthe river there are ten graphic images of things likecorn, a cow, a thorn bush and so on. If the ship isallowed to stray off its path and hits one of theseimages, a sound plays (for example “ouch’” is heardif the thorns are hit).

A timer shows the time (in seconds) that haselapsed since the ship entered the scene. Withouthitting a sound icon the ship can complete thejourney is fifty-three seconds. If it hits a sound icon,five seconds is added to the timer. If the shipcompletes the journey within a given time, acelebration movie is played.

VisiBreath is successful to a large degree in engagingthe user while encouraging respiratory control aswell. But the current interface demonstrates only asmall part of the project’s huge potential. So wheredo we go from here?

We are interested in developing other fun interfacesthat use breathing techniques that create awarenessof the breath and enhance voluntary control of itsfunction. We are also looking at several possibleapplications that would use the breath as an input

mechanism to a device that would offer those withmotor or speech impairments control of anenvironment, or that could function as an artist’stool.We are currently seeking funding for this.

References

Bass, Christopher and Gardner, William (1985) EmotionalInfluences on Breathing and Breathlessness. In: Journal ofPsychosomatic Research, volume 29, no. 6, pp. 599-609.

Baar, Etal: Respiratory Therapy in Childhood Asthma. In: PadiatrPadol, volume. 12, part 1, pp 76-84

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihali (1992) Flow,The psychology of Happiness.Harper & Row

Shneiderman, Ben Designing the User Interface Strategies forEffective Human Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley PublishingCompany 1998

Figure 2:The Visibreath screen.

Marilyn Lennon is a researcher at the InteractionDesign Centre, University of Limerick.

URL: http://www.vlu.ie/~idc

For more on Visibreath see i3labTV:

http://www.tvropa.com (follow the “science” link)

22

What were the origins of the Teacherslab, how didthe idea come about?

In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, ahuge number of students have recently beenentering further education. Neither teaching staffnor buildings are prepared for this, nor is there thefinancial capacity to support this growth easily:education is not a rich sector. Institutes have all hadto go through fusions and re-structuring to adjust tothe high number of students, with limited financialresources; and there is a great tiredness because ofall the organisational and policy changes involved.

In addition to this, the role of teachers is changing,from transferring information to being coaches in thelearning process. Compared to their teachers,students are often media-literate and have noproblems dealing with the Internet and elobaratemedia-mixes. But, if you look more closely, they stillhave to acquire information and networkcompetencies, and they do need teachers to addressissues of quality with them in the midst of all thesurrounding media. And the universities have to

address all these things in a way that will add to thelearning process. It can feel like an impossible gridlock.

The Amsterdam University of ProfessionalEducation is a large organisation, with 19.000students and 1.000 teaching staff spread over 20institutes. We have found that in many of theseinstitutes teachers are concerned with the samethings, are facing the same problems. And oftenthey are developing solutions on their own, oftenin a very simple way, often with little or no supportor encouragement.

So in addressing the challenges faced by theUniversity, we decided to create an educationalintranet, which means an investment ininfrastructrure and in people. To shape it well, wetook into account our experience that the Internetis to a large extent shaped by its users. So it madesense to ensure that the teachers have insight in, andexperience with, the possibilities of the digital andnetwork era: that way they can contribute to thedesign process of this new knowledge managementsystem, the educational intranet. We developed the

Caroline NevejanAmsterdam University of

Professional Education nevejan@xs4all.nl

Interview byMimo Caenepeel

University of Edinburghmimo@cogsci.ed.ac.uk

magazine

Interview

Tulips in AmsterdamA conversation with Caroline Nevejan

What makes applications, software, digital products (and indeed manyother things) flourish and work? “The answer to that is definitely ‘people’,”says Caroline Nevejan, senior advisor at the Amsterdam University ofProfessional Education. People can do amazing things, often by simplemeans or through simple ideas. But finding out what people need, or whatadds value to their lives, is different from doing marketing research, findingout what you can sell.

‘People’ were very much at the centre of a unique event organisedrecently.The OrO/Oro1 Teacherslab, which took place in Amsterdam on26, 27 and 28 January, brought together 1.000 teachers of the Universityof Professional Education for three days of brainstorming, discussion andlearning about new possibilities and sources of inspiration in theinformation society. Caroline developed the idea for the Teacherslabtogether with John Thackara of Doors of Perception, and WillemVelthoven of the Dutch company Mediamatic, who were also involved inthe organisation.

Teachers, says Caroline, are the human capital of the university. Manypeople don’t regard them as such: they are often seen as the mereexecutors of policies created for (but not by) them. But they are crucial.And they need to be an integral part of the process of innovation andchange that has to unfold at universities. In this interview she explains why,and why an event like the Teacherslab makes a difference.

23

OrO/OrO Teacherslab to help the whole facultyacquire the relevant insight and experience — sothat teachers not only have to listen to policy, butcan inspire policy as well.

What did the Teacherslab involve? How was itorganised?

The Teacherslab consisted of two parts: aninternational conference in the mornings (organisedin collaboration with Doors of Perception) andworkshops on a related theme in the afternoons.

The international conference took place inAmsterdam’s largest theatre, the Carré. About halfthe speakers were experts from the University, whoreported on experiments carried out in the area of“learning to learn” (using ICT to facilitate thelearning process) over the past five years — theUniversity of Professional Education has a great dealof experience and expertise in this area.The otherhalf were high-calibre international speakers whocould challenge the thought process.

In the afternoon we walked along the river Amstelto Leeuwenburg, one of the university’s biggestbuildings, near the station. There the teachers splitinto 50 groups of 20 for the afternoon workshops.

The first day was about searching and finding. Wehad a speech at the conference about what youwant to show (or don’t you want to show) aboutyourself on the Internet, and how you can findpeople. This was complemented with hands-onwork in the afternoon.The teachers made their ownOrO page, which is like a home page but connectedto a database; so everybody could add keywords toit and search for colleagues with similar ideas, orengage in debate. It was great! We wanted them tohave fun finding each other; and this worked like acharm. The software was especially developed byMediamatic, a very nice company here in Holland.

The second day was about new editorial conceptsfor education. Steven Johnson from Interface gave atalk in the morning. And in the afternoon theteachers thought about things such as “What do Ilike to learn by myself?”“What was my best teachingexperience?” “What do I think of my changing roleas a teacher?”“Which of the concepts that I saw thismorning could be useful?” And they wrote storiesabout that, five stories each on that secondafternoon, all stories of about 100 words.

On the third day we focused on the really bigenvironments, like Harvard, Fathom, Holomedia andBlackboard. And in the afternoon we did the whole

“It was very, very nice. It all took place in the Carré, the biggest Theatre in Amsterdam,with red chairs and lights and music…”

24

policy-voting thing. There were fifteen issues youcould vote for, in terms of two questions: 1) do youfind it an important issue? And 2) do you agree? Wecould see the results of the votes by institute, whichwas very interesting, because different institutesfound different issues important. There weredebates on this, both in the network as a whole andin the smaller groups.

And then we had a great party, with many teachersdancing in a place they never dreamed of everdancing in …

It must be a challenge to create an event on thisscale that really takes off.What do you think are thevital ingredients?

I have created huge events before and I know you cannever be completely sure that the magic will happen.But if you put a lot of care into it, if you do your best,chances are the magic will come to you.And this wasone occasion where that really happened.

This was particularly visible at the end of the event,when we did the “Thank you”.Ten groups of peoplewalked up a huge staircase leading to the first floor(where the buffet was set out) while the teachersapplauded: 55 coaches, 100 students teaching in theworkshops, 50 people from the IT department(who had worked nightshifts!), 75 people fromcatering… The teachers saw that over 300 peoplehad worked hard for them over those three days —and that was good.

So it didn’t just go well, it went better than well! Andnow the story is going all around the Netherlands…

What I find interesting is that in education we havevery little means, we don’t have much infrastructure— but you can make something like the Teacherslabhappen. I often find that in research programmes thelow-technology solutions are discredited. But for thissort of social investment a really simple thing that iswell-thought-through from a human perspective, acitizenship perspective, can make a difference.

What do you see as the impact and the longer-termeffects of the Teacherslab?

An event like the Teacherslab is a way of effectingsocial change, it’s a very nice concept for changemanagement. In three days we changed a particularculture, we credited who is important, and wetaught people how they can innovate.There will befollow-up, of course, but first you need a flame. Andwe lit that flame.

At the Teacherslab I was the “in-between” betweenartists, software people, the university, and editors.This was interesting for me, but it was interesting forthem as well, to work with us. Because this is real-world stuff, and the problems they had to face werepretty complicated. Both Willem (Velthoven, ofMediamatic) and John (Thackera, of Doors ofPerception) came to me at the end of the event andsaid how great it was to see the effect of what you doon 1.000 teachers, who then go on to effect 19.000students, who will then spread things even further. ..

magazine

“And then we had a huge party, with hundreds of teachers dancing…”

25

So I see the Teacherslab as a moment in a process,a catalyst. And now the interesting time comes,when we really have to guide the innovationprocess, guide a dynamics that will eventually speakfor itself. But this will take another few years.

At the Teacherslab you took the teachers very seriously,you listened to their views and you will let those viewsinspire future policies. This is a very different approachfrom the one you mentioned earlier, from trying to findout what will sell, what you can make money with.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recentlyon this topic, on corporate citizenship, on the fact thatcompanies are beginning to realize that there is a limitto the exploitation of the human soul. And if you arepart of a big research institute or programme likePhilips, or Siemens, or i3, you have to be aware of that.People are individuals and citizens all the time, andonly some of the time they are consumers as well. Butthe balance these days is pretty much tilted towardshow we are approached and considered by theproducers — and unfortunately this is often also theperspective of researchers.

In learning you have the same issues as in e-commerce: trust is extremely important, you have tovalue things, grade them, and both learning and e-commerce involve transactions. But the two aredriven by very different motivations. In educationthe drive is to create added value, in the end forsociety. Education has a long-term perspective. Howdo you teach that kind of value, how do youfacilitate a good learning process?

At the i3 Annual Conference in Sienna I spoke topeople from the design department of a well-knowncompany, about them possibly being a partner in therealisation of the Teacherslab, so that we could learnfrom them and they could learn from us. But theysaid: “No no, you would have to pay us 500,000guilders. “ End of conversation. The funny thing isthat a lot of companies are of this hit-and-runmentality. They don’t see that it’s worth taking thetime to invest in seeing what the process is.

And education is an integral part of that process.

Take some of the figures that John Thackera showedin his presentation at the conference part of theTeacherslab. In America, 10 million people per year

buy tickets to sporting events. 97 million buy airlinetickets. And 200 million people buy continuingeducation. Which, as John pointed out, is absolutelynot what you might expect. Most people wouldassume that sport would be the top and maybeeducation at the bottom. It turns out not to be true.

Education is life-long and for everybody. It is a reallydeep process in society, and it’s integrally linked todemocracy. But what tends to happen, like in theEuropean Commission, is that education is a “specialgroup”, it’s somewhere in its own little box.

At the Teacherslab we didn’t have a single lecture onclassical educational theory, not one. But it was clearthroughout that education is part of a changingworld, and that if you are designing the world youalways have take in education.

You are familiar with i3, as a reviewer and as aninvolved observer. Do you have any thoughts aboutthe direction i3 should take, what may be missing,any advice?

Thinking about the projects I I’m familiar with in i3, Ican see some very interesting research. But it wouldbe so nice if it could get it out of its “loop”, out ofthe experiments, and become part of life. I know thisisn’t easy: as with any programme there is theproblem that you do your research and then thefunding stops, and you have to have something thatyou can transfer to someone else. The transfer is

“Teachers are often the last people to talk to. But they are the ones whohave to make the magical process of learning happen.We can’t make

changes if the teachers are not with us, if they don’t take part in shaping it.”

26

often the problem – it has to happen too soon, toofast, with too little care, too little continuity; and thenknowledge about the product disappears,disappears too completely for changes wished forby users to happen. One has to guideimplementation all the way, also because a productchanges a lot when it is implemented.

Another issue that needs to be explored is that ofcommunities, and the structures that protect them.For instance, we all know the streets. Our streets aregoverned by city councils, and provincial or regionalcouncils, and ministers and parliaments… There areguiding structures. But in the information society itgets more complicated. For instance, until recentlywe had something called “the digital city” here inAmsterdam, which was the largest vir tualcommunity in Europe. And this was sold, and thenew owner threatens to unplug the community!And there are no laws, and no rights, no structuresgoverning this.

What I’m saying is that in designing the informationsociety we’ve had ten years of finding more gadgetsand more fun stuff, but socially we are facing a reallyhuge challenge: to incorporate all this into our systems,and to get the privacy, the protection, theresponsibility, and the accountability for all these thingssorted out.These are major issues at the moment.

I am sure we will always need projects that push thelimits of technology. But I think that quite a few ofthe i3 projects have not addressed the value systemthat they create — while actually that was what itwas all about. I find democracy a really importantissue; it is more and more threatened in the world,and as developers we have to embed these notionsin our systems.

But it is difficult to know how to do it. And at themoment I don’t know any way other than workingwith real people in real communities, trying tocreate real extra value.

1 OrO/OrO stands for “Onderwijs, Research en Ontwikkeling“(“Education, Research and Development”).

magazineCaroline Nevejan joined the University ofProfessional Education of Amsterdam in 1999,and currently directs the educational designprocess of this large institution, in collaborationwith teachers, students and other co-workers.Focal points are the development of integratedlearning environments and of information andnetwork competences.

Nevejan has been active in European culture forthe past 15 years and has been deeply involvedin the start of the Internet and the design ofdigital culture in the Netherlands. She is a regularpresenter at national and international fora, andan advisor to national and European policymakers. She is chair of the board of the Doorsof Perception Foundation.

Caroline Nevejan home page:http://www.xs4all.nl/~nevejan/

Teacherslab URL: http://www.teacherslab.hva.nl/

“The theatre was decorated withtulips.Which also pointed to

“tulpenmania” in the 17th century,when tulips became a real hype for

a while and went to the stockmarket, until eventually the wholething crashed.Yet now they’re a

really important industry forHolland. It’s like with new

technology: we are beyond thehype; what will be the added value

of all this new stuff?”

27

The main purpose of the IWALT2000 conferencewas to bring together researchers, academics andindustry practitioners who are involved orinterested in the design and development ofadvanced and emerging learning technologies. Theresponse was overwhelming, and despite the almostprohibitive distance between New Zealand and therest of the world, about 130 participants from morethan 20 countries attended the conference.

Since the conference was an IEEE event, weexpected to see some quite technical state-of-the-art research and implementation work. But as itturned out, a large number of submissions wereactually concerned with the issues surrounding the“social impact” of such technologies.This is satisfyingbecause it suggests that the overall research onadvanced learning technologies is no longerrestricted to laboratory prototypes: it is now flowinginto real world implementations, and thesubsequent need for assessment of its socialimplications is being felt.

Interestingly, the same message was heard in theopening keynote speech of Professor David Merrill ofUtah State University, USA, who criticised thepathetic current state of educational softwareavailable on the market, and commented upon itsadverse effect on education. He mentioned fivephases of effective instruction: a problem to be solved,activation of prior experience, and demonstration,application and integration of knowledge and skills. Hepointed out that no existing educational softwareprovides competence in all five phases.

Highlights of the conference include the evaluationframework presented by Grainne Conole ofUniversity of Bristol, UK, a practical approach toevaluate learning technologies; the importance of“context” in a learning scenario stressed by AnaPaula Afonso of University of Coimbra, Portugal;enhancing educational experience by effectivelyusing otherwise obvious technology, by Nian-ShingChen of National Sun Yat-Sen University,Taiwan; andthe use of tele-education as an alternative to tele-medicine, by Les Folio of USAF School of AerospaceMedicine, USA.

During the three days of the conference, about 70full and short papers were presented.Themes variedand covered a large spectrum, ranging fromtraditional research areas such as distance education,evaluation and intelligent tutoring systems to morenovel areas such as agents, adaptive hypermedia,electronic assessment and virtual environments.Unlike most conferences in this area, very fewimplementation case studies were presented: mostpresentations focused on research reflectingunderlying theories and related social issues.

Another interesting part of the conference were thefive panels that touched on so-called “hot topics oftoday”. Not surprisingly the “social impact” themewas reflected in these panels too.The topics coveredwere asynchronous learning process dynamics;telemedicine and tele-education; intelligent tutoringtools – adaptation to non-stationary environments;the development of science and technologyeducation planning in vocational and highereducational institutions; and the use and misuse ofsimulations and animations in educational systems.

Overall, the conference was a big success, affirmingthe need for an event like this one, which was a bitdifferent from other such events in the area. Thenext conference in the series is due to take placein the USA in August 2001, and will focus onissues, achievements and challenges in advancedlearning technologies.

KinshukMassey UniversityKinshuk@massey.ac.nz

Conference report

Learning technologies hit the real worldIEEE International Workshop on Advanced Learning Technologies (IWALT2000),Palmerston North, New Zealand, 4 — 6 December 2000

“Professor David Merrill of UtahState University, USA, who criticisedthe pathetic current state ofeducational software available on themarket, and commented upon itsadverse effect on education.”

28

magazine

The initiative that created the i3 programme was both visionary and seminal. It was notablyvisionary in predating the emergence of the Information Society Technologies (IST)programme of the CEC. It was notably seminal in creating successive research calls,predicated on the core principle of empowering individuals of all ages (from eight years toeighty) and local communities in all aspects of information and communication technologies.

As the i3 programme completes its first quinquennium, there now appears to be a shiftin the balance between the two extremes of the research impetus, between content-ledresearch on the one hand and the technological imperative on the other.The dynamicof the advances being achieved in information and communication technologies iscreating a climate for change for the i3 community.

Moreover, not only has the R&D climate changed, but so, on another level, has the R&Dlandscape, in that a number of R&D initiatives recently launched in Europe and the USAhave altered the landscape of both user-centred and content-led research. The newlaboratories in England (Marconi Research Centre, University of Cambridge), Ireland(MediaLab Europe, Dublin) and most recently in Italy (Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea),are examples of this. As in the case of the i3 structures, the organisation of theseenterprises is based on various patterns of academic and industrial partnership andbrings together the disciplines of computing, design, media technology, education andhuman factors, amongst others.

Many of the industrial sponsors of these new laboratories are European corporations,prominent in the information, media and communication industries.The question has tobe posed: why have the several successive efforts of the i3 coordination andmanagement to attract sponsorship by these European corporations not met with aresponse comparable with that shown to the exemplars above, particularly in the areasof research exploitation? It is obvious that, since the i3 programme has a long-term,exploratory research brief, a transition mechanism is required that links its researchoutcomes to industrial take-up. But where, three years down the line, are the “pontoonbridges” to the corporate development laboratories?

Perhaps it is time to look again at the i3 strategy for forward planning, not least sinceseveral of the new European research enterprises have putative research agendas thatresonate closely with those of i3 — agendas that include strong design interests,strengths in advanced video and cinematic technologies, and a significant commitment toearly learning and education research. In the case of the i3 coordination andmanagement effort, currently dealing with pressures for change both internally andexternally and taking stock of the effect of an altered R&D landscape, the time has comefor a significant reappraisal of policies, priorities and operating strategies generally.

However fanciful the metaphors used to describe i3 and its goals (whether biological,organisational or environmental) that have been bandied about on these pages recently,the raison d’être and founding concern of the i3 programme was researching the qualityof human users’ interaction with today’s digital media and information systems. In anyassessment of future directions, this user-centred founding principle must surely beconsidered immutable.

Patrick PurcellImperial College, London

p.purcell@ic.ac.uk

Debate

Carpe diem...“Quo vadis?” Jakub Wejchert asked at the i3 Annual Conference in Jönköping.“Quis es?” Marc Blasbandretorted in i3mag09. Patrick Purcell continues the debate on the future of i3 with another stroke of Latin:“Carpe diem!”

29

Equally, given the new R&D landscape, it is timely to reaffirm the special priorities andstrengths that should inform European research programmes, of which i3 is a leadingexample. These include priorities based on social and cultural awareness and pre-eminence in design and the performance arts.

In the conspectus of EC research & development activity, i3 has the implicit role of beinga long-term research programme which proactively identifies future trends anddevelopments beyond the leading edge in human-centred interface research. So it iscrucially important that the newly proposed i3 books (see the ‘news’ section of this issue,p45) describing i3 achievements over recent years should also point the way forward —on the basis of hard-won research experience — to the next generation of i3 research.In a similar vein, now is the opportune moment to significantly augment i3net’s “FutureProbes” project, a project which has the remit of extending the horizons of i3 research.With such important potential, the Future Probes should be more formally established,more widely publicised and certainly more substantially funded.

Again, in the context of the i3 book and other efforts to disseminate the good work ofthe i3 programme, now is a good time to reconsider the designation of the IntelligentInformation Interfaces programme as i3 (“i-cubed”). Frankly, “i3” has become somethingof an awkward cypher, largely inaccessible to the outside world and consistentlymisrepresented typographically. In one recent publication the i3 programme wasdiscussed as the “13” (thirteen) programme of the CEC!

To reiterate, the environment of the i3 research programme has changed significantly, andits immediate future has become a matter of speculation. Its chosen areas of research anddevelopment have become, in this new decade, a very lively scene, both in Europe and inthe USA, with powerful competitive partnerships (competitive partnerships that may havethe potential to become collaborative partnerships, where i3 is concerned). Clearly, the i3programme collectively represents an enormous deployment of resources, skills andacquired research experience over the past five years. Now is the time to forge an excitingnew deployment of i3 resources (including management, coordination and projects).

But this opportunity calls for much more than the tentative “Quo Vadis” caption of the i3annual conference last year. It demands the trenchant clarion call “Carpe Diem, Seize the Day!”

Patrick Purcell is Visiting Professor at theInformation Engineering Section of theDepartment of Electrical and ElectronicEngineering, Imperial College, London. His workreflects a primary and abiding interest in theapplication of technology in various aspects ofhuman affairs, especially in the application of newmedia in the design of the user interface. Patrickis a member of the i3 Coordinating Group.

URL: http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/hp/staff/purcell.html

The user-centred long-term research initiative launched five yearsago by the predecessor of the Future and Emerging Technologies(FET) Unit seems remarkably prescient, in retrospect, in the wayit anticipated by several years the swing of the researchpendulum from an emphasis on technology-driven R&D tocontent-led and user-centred R&D. But the research pendulummay already have started its return swing towards moreemphasis on technology, a swing that may significantly affect thefuture course, direction and ethos of the i3 programme.

This factor, coupled with other developments in the R&Dlandscape in both Europe and the USA, suggests a timelyopportunity (some say an urgent need) for the i3 community toreassess its current status and its future progress. Without asalutary reappraisal of its current trajectory there is the distinctpossibility that the i3 programme may simply ‘run out of road’.The time for such a reappraisal is right now!

30

magazine

Josep BlatUniversitat Pompeu Fabra

josep.blat@tecn.upf.es

Is the i3 programme successful? Some reviewers compare the results of i3 (CI and ESE)projects with those of MIT’s MediaLab, an acknowledged source of inspiration for i3. Acomparison of the two does not always turn out to be favourable for our European projects.But as a measure of success it somehow misses the point that i3 was created preciselybecause of the lack of this line of research in Europe.

An alternative could be to argue that after three years, the main success of i3 lies in the wayit has stimulated projects, teams and researchers, and dealt with important problems. It couldbe pointed out that when they started out most of the teams involved were relativelyinexperienced in the type of research they undertook within i3, that interdisciplinarity wasnon-existent, and that expecting significant general results would have been overoptimistic.Thus one could take the view of feeling satisfied with these results which could be qualifiedas “promising” although not outstanding. I do not feel very comfortable with such a position.First of all, the aim of research is always to achieve the highest quality, and not being up tointernational standards therefore does not seem satisfactory. Moreover, i3 is funded by publicmoney, and project funding has been relatively generous; and for both those reasons projectsshould have made the most of this money. Has this been the case? Answers will differ. Mypersonal one is a bit negative.

But what should be the next step, taking into account that most of the research results arenot significant enough (yet)? The FET initiative is now using fresh money to stimulate otherlines of pioneering research, such as, for instance, the Disappearing Computer. This has leftsome i3 teams with the feeling that just as they are starting to get significant results, just asthey are moving into deeper and more substantial issues, the funding disappears! At the sametime, there is a strong temptation for good teams to move towards the new funding, whichhas the perverse effect of discontinuing research lines along which new teams werebeginning to achieve international standards (somehow meaning a waste of the time andmoney invested). And the same teams become newcomers again in another area —something which was reflected in the low quality of some of the proposals submitted inresponse to the Disappearing Computer call.

So should FET continue to fund projects along the lines that it has opened up? FETrepresentatives would probably reply that their goal is to start up and encourage newresearch lines which are weak in Europe; that i3 people have been given money already forstarting such new lines; and that the teams should now be able now to get more competitivefunding from the private sector or from other less futuristic lines of the IST programme. Imostly support this argument; in my view stimulating research of the highest quality is at oddswith consolidating favoured, more or less closed channels. But I also argued earlier that theresearch of some i3 projects is not sufficiently developed yet to move on to private or pre-competitive research funding. Perhaps FET can (and should) help such projects byintroducing some of the ideas emerging from i3 as keywords for general IST lines.This wouldbe an intermediate solution which would provide some projects with productive ways ofavoiding the possible waste of time and money I referred to earlier.

If you have read so far, thanks! If you find my impressions provocative, I shall be veryhappy. My aim is to stimulate debate, and the more people take part in this debate, thericher it becomes.

Debate

…quam minimum credula postero*

Josep Blat is Professor of Computer Scienceat the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelonaand is involved in the éTui project. Hepioneered, together with other people inEurope and the US, what has become astrong line in new methods of imageanalysis, and has developed technologicaland creative aspects of graphics, computeranimation, multimedia and GIS, both off-and on-line. He is currently head of a newTechnical School at the Universitat PompeuFabra, which specialises in research andeducation in Technology and DigitalCommunication.

URL Technical School, Universitat PompeuFabra:

http://www.upf.es/esup/

Josep Blat home page:

http://www.iua.upf.es/~jblat

Joseph Blat has a long-standing relationship with i3 projects in different roles, sometimes as an “outsider”(as project reviewer or evaluator), but also as an “insider” (taking part in an ESE project). In response tothe debate about i3 started in the previous issue, he voices “some impressionistic thoughts on theprogramme and future possibilities.”

*Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (Hor., Oden 1,11,8): Seize the day, trust the next one as little as possible.

31

It is a good thing that several members of the i3community have embarked on a debate about thefuture of i3 — a debate which is still continuing inthis magazine. It is an even better thing that thesemembers are, generally, debating i3’s future from acultural viewpoint, rather than with the sole intent ofkeeping i3 alive. i3 was in fact a radically new eventin the context of European research on ICT, since itscalls proposed a new vision on ICT technologies andcalled for research projects that would develop,challenge and, eventually, redefine this vision. i3’ssurvival, therefore, is interesting only if its visionremains capable of orienting European research.

Let me take advantage of my columnist’s role tocomment on new questions rather than giving newanswers. I will try to rethink the i3 vision, taking intoaccount my personal experience both within i3 andoutside it, but also keeping it as general as possible.This is also what we tried to do when we definedthe theme of the first i3 summer school, which willbe held in Ivrea (Italy) from 1 – 10 September 2001.The title we have given to the first i3 summerschool, “Designing for communities”, is, in my view, agood starting point for debating the i3 vision. Payingattention to the words that make up the title givesrise to new questions, questions that push the i3vision further into the direction proposed in theoriginal (1996) calls.

“Designing”

As Marie Redmond pointed out at the Quo Vadis?panel in Jönköping, one achievement of i3 is that ithas “embraced designers and brought them in thewhole way of development” The multidisciplinarynature of application design has been fullyreconsidered in i3, showing that it needs the jointcontribution of technologists, designers and users(supported by human scientists, helping the otherparticipants to deepen their understanding of theirown practice).We have experienced this in many i3projects and discovered how difficult it is, and how itrequires that each discipline is capable of listening tothe other ones. What we have achieved is not thesolution, but only a better and more articulatedunderstanding of what ‘human-centred’ means. Weneed to develop this understanding further, sharingit with the different cultures and professions takingpart, and develop design approaches and methodsthat guide multi-disciplinary collaboration towardsthe creation of innovative and effective user-centred

systems. It would be a serious error, therefore, tostop researching it.

“(What?)”

The title “Designing for Communities” does not makexplicit what we aim to design for communities. Butthe direct object of design is as relevant as designitself to characterize the vision emerging from the i3community. Making reference to the DisappearingComputer programme, Jakub Wejchert claimed(again at the Quo Vadis? panel of the JönköpingConference) that the issue is: “How can we actuallyendow normal objects increasingly with propertiesthat make our lives easier?” It is a clear point thatbrings forth the necessity of moving from thedevelopment of computer-based applications to thetransformation and enrichment of normal objectswith ICT. I prefer to rephrase it, substituting “objects”with “places”, to underline the fact that we shouldnot consider existing objects as limits for the systemswe design, and that augmenting the places we live incan be considered the ultimate goal of our research.

“for communites”

But i3’s main shift , with respect to current trends inthe development of ICT applications, has been intaking communities as the reference point for itsprojects. Robert Putnam, Professor of Public Policyat Harvard University, in his opening speech atCSCW2000 in Philadelphia (December 2000)challenged the CSCW community to design systemscapable of supporting the revival of communitiesafter their decline in the last thirty years. I am notsure if the CSCW community will be able to give apositive and creative answer to Putnam’s question,but the i3 community can do it, since it has uniqueexperience in working on systems that supportcommunities.What we need to do now is reflect onthe work already done and further develop ourunderstanding of what communities need, in orderto design new systems that have a greater impact oncommunity life.

There is a real risk that the vision which drives theefforts of the i3 community will remain in the realmof speculation, if the European Community does notsupport it by giving continuity to its research agendaand by guiding it towards new objectives. The lasttwo calls within FET were not able to achieve this,and the i3 experience may vanish.

Giorgio de MichelisUniversity of Milano – Bicoccagdemich@disco.unimib.it

Opinion Column

Debating the i3 vision

32

magazine

Clive HolthamCity University Business School

c.w.holtham@city.co.uk

I first heard about the i3 community through the callfor papers for the i3 Annual Conference distributedat the beginning of last year. When the paper Isubmitted with Victoria Ward was accepted, I kepttracking the (excellent) i3 conference web site toget a better idea of what to expect. I was lookingforward to being back in Jönköping, which I had lastvisited as a student in 1968.

But none of this really prepared me for the actualevent. I was struck by the conviviality of thecommunity: even though many of those present hadbeen active in i3 for up to four years, I was nevermade to feel like an “outsider”. I was also struck byhow unusually smoothly everything ran — includingthe number 1 bus back to the City Centre (what awonderful information interface, to have anelectronic bus display telling you exactly, andcorrectly, when the next two buses will depart…)

In terms of the conference’s content, I had notanticipated quite how important the exhibitionwould be. Even in two days I was not able to spendsufficient time at every stand.What I saw impressedme tremendously, particularly the human-centreddesign of the technologies presented. And it was agreat pleasure and privilege to be at the exhibitionwhen small school children visited: I only wish wecould achieve such child-like enthusiasm and energyin all our European universities and businesses…

One of the points that struck me after seeing the i3exhibition and listening to the paper presentations,was that there are considerable similarities betweensmall children and business executives when itcomes to information interfaces. For instance, bothhave short attention spans; both like to be thecentre of attention; and both like primary colours intheir interfaces!

The whole i3 stream on storytelling (gearedtowards children) has a parallel in business –organisations including the World Bank and IBMhave been using storytelling methods to share tacitexpertise or carry out post-project reviews. My co-author Victoria Ward worked with a West Africanstoryteller on a major knowledge managementproject when she was chief knowledge officer forNatwest Markets.

My own concern is with executive creativity. Muchof the tempo of the modern workplace, and thedesign of its offices, is almost guaranteed to preventexecutive creativity. Is it any wonder that businesspeople travel so much, when many of those we haveinterviewed tell us they are at their most creativeamidst the white noise of the airport departurelounge, or even while sitting in the aircraft? Otherfavourite locations for executive creativity are theopen air or the gym.The mobile phone (always on,regardless of urgency or importance of themessage) is a very poor creativity interface. It is atool for information work and information overload,rather than for the knowledge work that is so vitalfor executives.

It is therefore all the more important to developevents, experiences and opportunities that actuallyfocus executive creativity, because it is so difficult toachieve routinely. In my view many of the i3 projects(for instance, all the projects concerned withstorytelling) are capable of stimulating executivecreativity. I was most struck by the Psst! project: if wesubstituted business characters for the nine dolls,and business structure or processes for the sixboxes they sit on, I could see enormous potential forthe use of gibberish sound to open up new lines ofcorporate thinking.

I very much liked the NIMIS hardware and software.Its uncluttered interface and electronic desk couldbe very attractive if applied to business situations.NIMIS’s own literature also anticipates its extensionto other groups such as managers.

Within the eSCAPE project, the Cyberpond offersexceptional possibilities for executive informationretrieval, and perhaps also for business wargamingand simulations. Executives have become bored withWindows PCs and interfaces, not least because theyassociate them with their own administrative work.We need more exciting interfaces for them. TheCyberpond could be used, for instance, to bringfinancial and marketing information to life in acollaborative environment. The eScape PanoramicNavigator also has great potential for gaining greaterinsight into, say, market structures and complexinformation. At ZKM Karlsruhe they have a 9mdiameter version of the Navigator. Its wooden

Point of view

A look at i3 from a business perspective

Executive sense

33

platform could easily hold an executive team of sixto eight people who could then jointly ‘fly through’their monthly performance review meetings.

Victoria Ward and colleagues have already beenexperimenting with the art exhibition as a metaphorused for accelerating executive learning. Executivesare not great readers, but they are often very strongat tactile and visual experiences. I could seepossibilities for the HIPS system in that respect: wecould locate visual executive briefing or learning‘exhibits’ upon the walls of an executive learningcentre, and use the customised audio briefings toaugment the visual experience.

In our experience executives are not anti-technology or reluctant to use keyboards, but theyoften lose interest in the limited capabilities of aconventional office PC interface for their knowledgework. They are as happy as small children withmedium and low technologies. Unlike theiremployees, they are the one group that can opt outof high technology use.And as such they are an idealtarget group for the Disappearing Computer.

So I can see great potential, not just for the projectsI have specifically mentioned here but for i3 ingeneral, in a shift towards the thinking behind thedesign of systems for executives. Many of theproducts currently available, which weretheoretically designed for executive use, have notgrown out of a holistic perspective on executivework and assume very simplistic models ofexecutive behaviour.

I do hope the i3 community succeeds in expandingits thinking about intelligent interfaces. It certainlydeserves to succeed — and European businessneeds it to succeed.

Clive Holtham is the Bull Information SystemsProfessor of Information Management at theCity University Business School, London. Incollaboration with Victoria Ward, his focus iscurrently on how knowledge management inbusiness can be improved, especially formanagers and executives.

URL: http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~sf329/

NIMIS at Elmia

HIPS at Elmia

eSCAPE at Elmia

Many i3 ESE projects were recently on displayoutside the context of i3net-organized conferencesfor the first time, at two high-profile events towardsthe end of last year. Five i3 projects featured at thee-fair which fringed the annual Doors of Perceptionconference in Amsterdam in November 2000, andno less than ten i3 projects were present at theSalon de l’Education in Paris during the same month.

France’s Salon de l’Education, is a huge event (thehalls at the Paris Expo where it was held could easilyhouse a couple of full-size stadiums) with twosubstrands: Educatec (educational and vocationaltraining equipment, systems and services, now in its18th year) and Educ’mat (pre-school and primaryschools exhibition, in its second year). MarilynLennon was at the Salon and reports that

“(…) this massive five-day exhibition houses aneclectic ensemble of educational equipment, systemsand services.With around 2000 exhibitors and, if lastyear’s statistics are anything to go by, tens ofthousands of professional visitors (teachers, specialistsin education, distributors, institutional purchasingagents, managers and so on), it is a solid example ofthe healthy state of the industry.

Ten i3 educational projects were present, most ofthem shown for the first time in France, and alldemonstrating the diversity of i3 research in theeducation area. Five projects ran live demonstrations;the i3 stand also featured (specially produced)posters, videos and plenty of pamphlets andbrochures, both in French and in English.”

Doors of Perception, which is organised by i3member John Thackera, is an event of a differentkind: it provides a by now well-established platformfor new ideas on design, scenario development andinfrastructures.The theme of this year’s conference,which featured some high-profile speakers (includingsinger and composer Brian Eno) was “lightness”.Linked to the conference was an e-culture f,air,

organized into four zones: Staging, Interacting,Learning and Playing.The i3 projects present (NIMIS,éTui, Caress, POGO and KidsLab) were featured inthe Learning zone.

Melina McKim comments that

“POGO, in particular, attracted a lot of attention, andéTui was a big hit with the visiting children.Within theLearning zone, the i3 projects found themselves in thestimulating company of others such as Ideas Factor,y,of Illumina Company (producing for Channel 4 in theUK). Ideas Factory is an interactive learning tool andnetworking service that supports learning forteenagers and tweens in a fun environment, andcontained interesting ideas that could be adapted tofit the needs of younger children as well.”

What works at such events? Obviously interestingdemos, supported by high-quality written and visualmaterial, are crucial. But other things may play a role,perhaps in unexpected ways. Marilyn Lennon writesthat at Educ’mat,

“(…) i3 project representatives were present toanswer questions about design objectives, thedevelopment process, or the potential deployment oftheir projects, which resulted in much lively anddetailed discussion. It was striking that the i3 projectslargely stood alone in their presentation of designmethodology and the development process,compared to other stands on the floor (regardless oftheir state of development). It is difficult to say whatthe exact impact of this may have been, but the i3stand was always busy, with a steady flow of visitorsinterested enough to wait for Marc Blasband’s Frenchinterpretation when neccessary.”

It also helps, and this will not come as a surprise toi3 people involved in early learning projects, to havechildren try out the demos, because their responsecan speak volumes. Doors of Perception did haverelatively few children visitors. But at Educ’mat there

Mimo CaenepeelUniversity of Edinburgh

mimo@cogsci.ed.ac.ukF11

Conference report

Coming out

34

magazine

i3 projects stand tall in Amsterdam and Paris

35

were more, and Marc Blasband (the i3 Partnershipmanager, and main driving force behind i3’s presence

both at Educ’mat and at Doors of Perception), hadinvited five classes from schools in Paris, with eacharound 15 children aged four to six, to visit the i3stand. Svend Kiilerich was struck by how the childrenreally used the i3 stand:

“It was great to see the children’s enthusiasm forwhat the different i3 projects could offer, once theirteachers had explained the possibilities to them. Andthe enthusiasm of the children attracted many grown-up visitors to the stand, a welcome side effect!”

Those attending one or both of the events agreethat having a strong i3 presence on occasions suchas these is definitely worthwhile. Marilyn Lennonpoints to two rewards: the work of the i3community is made visible to a targeted audience;and i3 members have the opportunity to access andassess current products available in the industry.Svend Kiilerich also emphasises the networkingopportunities such events offer :

“Many i3 people at Educ’mat, especially thoserepresenting new projects looking for funding partnersand/or manufacturers, expressed how being thereenabled them to exchange ideas and make newcontacts, both outside and within i3; and how good itwas to be there as part of i3, instead of having toparticipate on their own (and probably gettingoverlooked)”

Making contacts matters, if only because it raisesawareness of shared concerns and challenges.Melina McKim says that both at the Salon and atDoors of Perception there was a lot of discussionamong i3 members on the future of i3 projects. Inparticular, she heard a lot of debate on how to bringthe think tank-type of research of many i3 projectsto market as actual educational products:

“This is an important issue. Many think-tanks remainat an academic, research-oriented level and theirideas never make it from prototype to product. Manyvisitors in Paris, including school principles andeducational managers, asked where they could buythe things they saw. Unfortunately, nowhere. If wewant children to be touched by our ideas andinventions, that vital aspect of R&D development,

namely how to make into an actual product, needs tobe included in our thinking. How many actualproducts has the much-praised MediaLab produced?Let’s hope that the recently opened Europeanaffiliate of the MediaLab pays ample attention to thisignored aspect of design.”

Marilyn Lennon (marilynlennon@hotmail.com) isa researcher at the Interactive Design Centre,University of Limerick. She was at the Salon thel’Education to represent the new projectVisiBreath (see also p20 of this issue).

Melina McKim (melina@xs4all.nl) is a researcheron the i3 projects Stories and KidsLab.

Svend Kiilerich (kiil@nis.sdu.dk) is manager ofi3net.

Doors of Perception URL:http://www.doorsofperception.com

Educ’mat URL: http://www.educatec.com

The European Network for Intelligent Information Interfaces

àà EEdduucc’’mmaatt 22000000Brevets, idées, concepts

Consultants

Participations

InteractifNIMIS: La classe

éTui: Le jouet

Caress: Le son

Démonstrations VisiBreath: Périphérique d’entrée par le souffle

ALES: Apprendre à lire par des histoires

C3: Introduction à la cartographie; utilisant E-SLATE favorisant la participation de l’enfant

TV & WWW animationYumga ga: Sciences

Pompeii: Histoire

Autres KidsLab: Analyse des besoins de l’enfant

Kerc: Compétition de robots

Écrans de MCM

37

The projects of the Disappearing Computer (DC)initiative, launched by the EU’s Future and EmergingTechnology (FET) programme, have now started.The DC initiative will focus on developingcollections of interacting artefacts to form people-friendly environments in which the computer-as-we-know-it has no role.

After a careful review and selection process 16projects were accepted for funding (for an overviewsee http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fetdc-sy.htm). Theprojects started on January 1, 2001, and will lastbetween two and three years. 37 institutions fromboth academia and industry in 13 countries areinvolved in the initiative, with a total effort of closeto 300 person years.

The DC initiative began its networking activities byelecting a Steering Group (SG) consisting ofNorbert Streitz (chair, GMD-IPSI, Germany), Lorna

Goulden (Philips Design, The Netherlands), SpyrosLalis (ICS-FORTH, Greece) and Paddy Nixon(University of Strathclyde, UK).A kick-off meeting ofall projects took place at GMD-IPSI on January 31,to start building the DC community and initiate itsfirst joint activities.

Computers start to disappear

News

The primary location for information, and forcommunication within the DC community, willsoon be available at

http://www.disappearing-computer.net

For further information on the DC initiative,please contact info@disappearing-computer.net

The DC Steering Group can be contacted via dc-sg@disappearing-computer.net

On 1 January 2001, the University of Genevaopened a new research laboratory, the GenevaInteraction Lab, which will carry out i3-relatedactivities. The lab was created inside TECFA, theuniversity’s education technology unit that was setup 12 years ago by the Faculty of Education andPsychology.

The agenda includes several research lines, including:

• The role of space on a virtual campus. How doesvirtual space enhances social interactions? Howdoes distance impart interaction patterns? Howdo users interpret their partner positions inspace? How do spatial representations reify socialpatterns, which are the real effects of socialnavigation and workspace awareness? Theseresearch lines are based, among other things, onthe previous works carried out by TECFA oncollaborative problem solving in MOOs andVRML worlds.

• It is clear nowadays that no virtual campus willreach efficiency without costly humantutoring/coaching. Can we improve this on-line

tutoring process by developing environments thatincrease the tutor's activities? When is on-linetutoring more important for efficiency? How doeson-line tutoring adapt to collaborative learningactivities?

• Does asynchronous awareness improve themutual understanding between a portfoliomanager and his client? Which uses of video reallyenhance the quality of remote one-to-oneinteractions?

• Do mixed reality and "roomware" offer newopportunities for improving what is generallyexpected from an Intranet? Can we expandoffices or coffee rooms over partly physical andpartly digital environments?

The Geneva Interaction Lab is funded by two Swiss-based companies: Viviance New Education, a majorglobal player in e-learning, and Pictet & Cie, thelargest privately held bank in Europe.

For more information contact Pierre Dillenbourg(Pierre.Dillenbourg@tecfa.unige.ch).

University of Geneva launches Geneva Interaction Lab

38

magazine

Two i3 projects were present in Nice for theIST2000 exhibition on 6 – 8 November 2000.During that period the Nice Acropolis, venue for theevent, housed more than 100 projects that theEuropean Commission had invited to participate,this time under the theme “Information society forall”. Both the ESE project NIMIS and the CI projectLiMe took part in Open access for all, NIMIS in thesub-category eLearning and LiMe in eSociety.

Svend Killerich was there and writes that:

“(…) it would not be an exaggeration to claim thatthe exhibition got a soaking start (and who wouldthink of bringing umbrellas to the normally sunnysouth of France?). However, the two i3 projects gotmore than dry-shod through the exhibition. Both ofthem were popular with visitors because of theirspectacular stands.The NIMIS focus of attention wasan interactive blackboard with an appealing“TOUCH ME!” written all over it: Frank Tewissen andAndreas Lingnau from Gerhard Mercator Universityin Duisburg obviously knew how to awaken people’scuriosity. But the two TV screens, with videosshowing the blackboard being used by schoolchildren, also made visitors stop and watch.

The interactive coffee table was what mainlyattracted people to the LiMe stand, which had beenset up as a cosy café with subdued light (and onlylacking coffee being served to make the illusioncomplete). A projector on the opposite wallenlarging the focus point of the coffee tablecompleted the interior.

Apart from specific project material the twostands also offered i3 brochures, posters, i3labTVand the brandnew i3mag 09, in order tocontextualize the projects.”

i3 at the Acropolis

The recently completed i3 research theme“Connected Community” is to be the subject of aforthcoming book with Patrick Purcell as its ChiefEditor.The launch of i3 in the mid-nineties presenteda visionary set of themes that would becomesocially significant in the next decade. “ConnectedCommunity” was one of those themes, and itsoutcomes and research results will form the basis ofthe new book.

The book’s style, design and content will be aimedat a broad readership. Its mission will be to conveyto this readership a range of insights into thestructure and organisation of future digitally-linkedlocal communities, based on the evidence of the

“Connected Community” research programme(including the projects MLounge, HIPS, LiMe,Presence, Maypole and Campiello).

With the “Connected Community” book as thefront runner, other books are planned based on theother i3 research progranmmes (InhabitedInformation Spaces and Experimental School

Environments). If you are interested in being thechief editor of one of those, please send a shortproposal outlining your ideas to Niels Ole Bernsen(nob@nis.sdu.dk) by 15 April 2001. Some financialsupport for the realization of the books is available.

“Connected Community” subject of forthcoming book

39

On 25, 26 and 27 January 2000, a thousandteachers from the Amsterdam University ofProfessional Education took part in a unique three-day workshop and hands-on lab about the futureof education.

The Oro/Oro Teacherslab, which took place at therenowned Carré in Amsterdam, exposed participantsto emerging innovations in technology, media andpublishing that will determine the future of educationand learning. The focus was not on the new-economyhype, but on how to use virtual environments to addvalue to the educational process. How can we ensurequality and a strong identity in the evolvinginformation society? And most of all: how canteachers develop and formulate their vision andthereby inspire future educational policies?

Each day of the Teacherslab (the name derived fromthe Dutch words “Onderwijs, Onderzoek enOntwikkeling”— “Education, Research andDevelopment”) featured a morning conferenceproduced for the Amsterdam universities by Doorsof Perception.This was followed by a huge hands-on‘Practicum’ in the afternoon, produced by Mediamatic.The morning conference featured innovators fromaround the world who explored the future oflearning in three themes: “Searching and Finding”,“Editing”; and “Interacting, Learning and Networking”.During the afternoon lab, the 1000 teachers — in 50groups of twenty teachers — carried out onlineexercises and experiments. Students acted asmentors for those with less experience.

In the Practicum, the university teachers used aneditorial system, specially designed by Mediamatic,that enables them to publish directly on the Net.After three days, the Oro/Oro network hosted over5000 short stories by teachers on education, theirexperiences, new possibilities and the future.

Oro/Oro Teacherslab URL:http://www.teacherslab.hva.nl

The Teacherslab was organised by the Hogeschool vanAmsterdam. Caroline Nevejan, senior policy advisor atthe Hogeschool (and well-known to many i3 membersand friends), was the originator of the concept. For aconversation with Caroline in which she looks back onthe Teacherslab, see p22-26 of this issue.

Oro|oro Teacherslab in Amsterdam gathers andlearns with one thousand teachers

i3net manager Svend Kiilerich has now taken on theeditorship of the i3 website. Recently implementedchanges include a new link “i3 in the media”(consisting of press clippings, TV clips, radio-clips(new) and press releases (new)). The earlier

“publications” link has been renamed “videos andpublications” and takes you to all i3 publications(including i3mag),as well as videos from different i3events not published in the media (those publishedin the media can be viewed on “i3 in the media”.)

Svend Kiilerich becomes i3 web editor

40

magazine

On 18 December 2000, experts from around theworld gathered in Ivrea for a preview of itsbrandnew Interaction Design Institute. The instituteaims to develop deep technical and culturalknowledge about communication services, and tofoster managerial skills, innovation andentrepreneurship. As an educational and researchfacility it will host, at full-strength, 100 students andresearchers from all over the world.

The preview, which was preceded by two-dayworkshop, included an exhibition organised intothree themes: “Communication services of tomorrow”;“Interaction qualities”; and “People and their cultures”.i3 projects LiMe (Living Memory) and Pogo featuredat the exhibition (under the third theme), rubbingshoulders with the likes of Flirt (Pixel Kissing, LostCat and Stampede), Chatterbots, Doppelgangers,Email bubbles, Led clothing and Salad bar.

The workshop and preview were attended by manyi3 members, including Giorgio De Michelis(professor at the University of Milan. and member ofthe i3 Coordinating Group), Irene McWilliam(director of research at Philips Design), John

Thackara (director and firstPerceptron of Doors ofPerception, and a member of the institute’s steeringcommittee), Marco Susani (formerly Director ofDomus Academy Research Centre, who recentlybecame manager of advanced concepts at Motorolain the USA), and i3 project officer Jakub Wejchert.

The Director of Interaction Ivrea is GillianCrampton-Smith, who said that: “Computers andnetworks are transforming almost every aspect ofthe world we live in. Interaction design determinesthe quality of our experience using these systems; italso determines the value of those experiences. Inthis sense, interaction design is of enormouseconomic importance.”

The initiative involves an initial commitment of 40million Euro from Olivetti and Telecom Italia.

URL: http://www.interaction-ivrea.it

The i3 summer school 2001 will be held at theInteraction Design Institute Ivrea. For more informationsee p43 of this issue.

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea plans to produce'super innovators'

Four new i3 projects (and six films in total) havenow been added to the i3labTV site(www.tvropa.com). They are marked with a redlabel “New” on the site.

To generate and assess new ideas for future films oni3labTV, a scientific committee has been set up,consisting of Mikael Fernström, executive producerThomas Homer Goetz, i3 manager Svend Kiilerich,Marilyn Lennon, Rossella Magli, Paddy Nixon andJavier Segovia. If you have a proposal for a new i3TVweb item, please get in touch with Svend Kiilerrich(kiil@nis.sdu.dk).

i3labTV growing fast

41

Many i3magazine readers will remember LocalNets,the international workshop on community-basedinteractive systems, held at the i3 AnnualConference in October 1999. Contributions to thisworkshop have now been published as a specialissue of the journal Telematics and Informatics, aninternational journal on telecommunications andinternet technology (Volume 18, number 1,February 2001) which was guest-edited by KostasStathis and Patrick Purcell. Telematics andInformatics is published by Elsevier Science(www.elsevier.nl)

Special Telematics and Informatics issue on LocalNets

i3net welcomes new members

The i3 community continues to grow: several newmembers have joined recently, including theUniversity of Bari (Italy), the University of Bremen(Germany) and the University of West of EnglandBristol (UK). i3net continues to invite applications formembership from organisations, companies oruniversities who meet the following requirements:

• involvement in at least one research project(national or European) of high relevance to i3;

• demonstrated excellence in i3-relevant work(research, design and/or the development ofadvanced applications); and

• a commitment to contribute actively to activitiesof the i3 community

Applications must provide evidence on the abovepoints, and give the names of the individuals who willbecome i3 members if the application is successful.Applications are decided on by i3net CoordinatingGroup, and applicants will be notified of the decisionwithin two months after receipt their application.

Applications should be submitted to the NewMembers Task Group leader, Alan Munro,(a.munro@dcs.napier.ac.uk) with a cc to i3netmanager Svend Kiilerich (kiil@nis.sdu.dk). For moredetails on the advantages of i3membership, what itinvolves, who can apply, the criteria for acceptance,and new members, see http://www.i3net.org (takethe shortcut “organisations can now join the i3community”).

42

Workshop topics

• Aesthetic expression of feelings (April 23, full-day)

• Learning issues of moving from GUI (Graphics User Interface) to PUI(Perceptual User Interface) (April 25, full-day)

• Moving between the physical and digital: exploring and developing newforms of mixed- reality user experience (April 24, afternoon)

• Cognitive versus physical disappearance (April 25, full-day)

• Continuity in future computing systems (April 23-24, full-day)

• Web based platforms for cooperative learning (April 24, full-day)

• Agent coordination and context-adaptation in a world of disappearingcomputers (April 24-25, full-day)

• Digital technology triggering creativity (April 25, full-day)

• IT Education for girls - goals, strategies and experiences (April 23, full-day)

• Expanding learning spaces (April 25, full-day)

• “Look ma - no hands ...” no mouse, and no computer?.....A new expressiveexperiential interface using the Personal Interactive CommunicationSystem (Personics) April 24, half-day)

• Intelligent educational and cultural (archi)textures (April 23, half-day)

The date:

23-25 April, 2001The place:

Casa Diocesana de Vilar, Porto, Portugal

magazine

Announcement

Spring Days are here again

For all information on onlineregistration, hotel booking and theworkshops:

http://www.dfki.uni-sb.de/imedia/workshops/i3-spring01/

or enter via the i3 home pagehttp://www.i3net.org/

43

Inspiration

Research in the context of i3 has contributed to radical innovation and change in the software culture,by opening it up to include design, by promoting collaboration with various other disciplines (such as thesocial sciences), by focusing on the needs of communities, and by actively involving users in the differentstages of research, design and development. In short, it has replaced a technology-driven approachaimed chiefly at coping with the introduction of new technologies, with a multidisciplinary approachaimed at tailoring technological development to the needs communities. In accordance with this, virtualand augmented places have been designed, implemented, tested and redesigned, to create newinteraction possibilities for different communities of users.

A similar perspective has inspired a number of new research centres and schools in Europe and in theUS.These include the recently created Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, which was set up to trainstudents from both the design and the software field in the new area of Interaction Design.

Motivation

Interaction Design is an emerging and dynamic research field where new concepts and ideas arecontinuously proposed and discussed. The time has come to offer young people from a variety ofbackgrounds (academic or industrial, and including fields as diverse as computer science andengineering, social science and ethnography, and industrial design) the opportunity to develop theirexpertise in Interaction Design.

The main aim of the i3 summer school is to involve the younger generation in research issuesencountered and addressed by the i3 community — not just to pass on the legacy of what has beenachieved but also, and especially, to create more awareness in other research and industrialenvironments of the new direction heralded by this work.

Theme and structure

The theme of the i3 summer school is “Designing for communities”. The chief focus will be on newapproaches to user-centred design, approaches that enable collaboration between different disciplinesand that support different types of communities in appropriate ways.The emphasis on the user side ofthe design process is seen as a core aspect of the education and training of interaction designers.Theschool will offer lectures and invited talks by leading people in the field, as well as the opportunity forhands-on experience in design ateliers.

Target group

Graduate students at masters or PhD level (or advanced undergraduate students with appropriateexperience) and young designers with some research experience are invited to apply.

Fee / financial support

The fee for attending the school is 500 Euro. There will be a number of grants for PhD studentscovering their fees and/or their travel and living expenses.

Preliminary announcement

First i3 summer school

Designing for communitiesorganised by i3 and the Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea Ivrea, Italy, 1 — 10 September 2001

The summer school’s home is the “blue house” designed byEduardo Vittoria in the 1950s as a research centre for the

Olivetti group. A unique cross-shaped structure at the edgeof a park, with exterior walls covered in blue ceramic tiles,

the “blue house” is a building full of light. Redesigned in 2000by Sottsass Associati architect Marco Zanini, it has been

refined to nurture a sense of community and newtechnology research.

To find out more aboutthe school, please email adeclaration of interest toGiorgio De Michelis(gdemich@disco.unimib.it).

44

The i3 community has been offered a largeexhibition area (420 m2) at Orbit/Comdex Europe2001 (Basel, 25-28 September 2001), to set up an i3research village, an environment showingthematically-organised state-of-the-art researchresults. Philips Design will supervise the overalldesign of the village.

Comdex is America’s foremost informationtechnology and communication show, now alsoorganised in Europe under the auspices of MesseBasel. It is expected to attract about 95.000professionals, and the i3 research village willprobably have in the region of 20.000 visitors. Inshort, this is an outstanding opportunity to exhibitto an interested, well-targeted audience (many ofwhom will be people in industry) at a prestigious,high-profile event.

Proposals are invited for both exhibits and videosfor the Orbit/Comdex i3 research village. Displayedwork can include, but should not be limited to,results arising from projects in the ConnectedCommunity, Inhabited Information Spaces andExperimental School Environments researchprogrammes. All i3 members, as well as those in theprocess of becoming members, are invited tocontribute.

Proposals should be for physical exhibits or videosshowing high-quality results that are accessible,visually appealing and exciting. They shouldincorporate or illustrate some of the distinguishingaspects of the i3 community (such as collaborationbetween different disciplines, a focus on the needs ofordinary people and communities, the central role ofart and design, a strong interest in learning &) in thecontext of advanced research into new interfaces.

Proposals should contain

• a brief description of what will be shown,including visual impact

• whether the proposal concerns an exhibit orvideo

• (in the case of an exhibit) a brief outline of space,installation and equipment requirements

The i3 presence at Orbit/Comdex Europe will bethe focal point of this year’s i3 Annual Event. Therewill be a number of special i3 activities that will giveus the chance to come together as a community,including talks, social events, and an Annual GeneralMeeting. The i3 research village will also contain apiazza where i3 members can meet, catch up anddebate informally. Some hotels within shorttravelling distance to Basel have been booked as theaccommodation base for members of the i3community. All i3 members will have free access tothe whole of Orbit/Comdex Europe 2001.

Further information and submission of proposals

All proposals must be submitted by email, no laterthan 15 March, to Marc Blasband (cplr@worldonline.nl).

For more information, please don’t hesitate tocontact Marc Blasband by email or phone:

cplr@worldonline.nl+31 30 699 2343 +31 6 5515 35 39 (mobile)URL for Orbit/Comdex Europe 2001:www.messebasel.ch/orbitcomdex.

magazine

Announcement

First Announcement

i3 at Orbit/Comdex Europe 2001Basel, 25 – 28 September 2001

45

Some dates for your diary

Run-up to Orbit-Comdex Europe 200115 March Deadline for submissions of proposals

23 April Final decision on accepted proposals

15 June Deadline for submission of exhibit description for special issue of i3magazine at Orbit/Comdex

15 July Deadline for completion of all design work

The event24 September i3 members construct exhibition stands

24 September (evening:) i3 reception and Annual General Meeting

25 – 26 September i3 project reviews

26 September i3 community dinner

28 September (evening) i3 members dismount exhibition stand

46

magazine

Mary Lou Maher, Simeon J. Simoff and AnnaCicognani: Understanding Virtual Design Studios.Springer, 2000.

A Virtual Design Studio (VDS) brings together peoplewho need to work together but are not co-located,with the technology that enables them to worktogether in a seamless manner. No longer do peopleneed to be physically in the same place; usingcomputers and the networks that connect them, theycan communicate and share ideas over large distances.

There is, however, an advantage to meeting togetherin person; we get to know our colleagues and canexpress ourselves easily, so collaboration occursnaturally. In “Understanding Virtual Design Studios”, theauthors give suggestions as to how networkedcomputers can be used to support designersworking together, providing the advantages of face-to-face collaboration for people who may be onopposite sides of the world.

The authors are very clear in their preface. Theypoint out that “This book does not provide anyanswers to the problems of effective collaborationin a virtual design studio”, but considers, rather, whatis possible and how it may be realised. This soundsdisappointing at first, as it is precisely the issues ofeffective use of distributed working environmentsthat are interesting and need to be overcome. But,on reflection, we need to be able to work togetherfirst before we can assess how effective our

collaboration is. What this book offers is anunderstanding of just what is required to be able toset up a VDS.

The book is divided into three parts: BasicConcepts, Communication and Representation andThe Shared Environment. Throughout the bookexamples are drawn from the field of architecturaldesign, and this influences some of the definitions ofdesign and work practices that are being supported.

Part one provides a thorough and detailedbackground to the concepts underpinning theVirtual Design Studio.This includes networking (witha strong focus on the use of the World Wide Web)and digital design media, defining images, 3D models,text and hypermedia. While this part of the bookcontains some interesting observations, it is, on thewhole, a little too detailed and too specific, goingdown to the level of TCP/IP packets and ASCII textdefinitions — does the designer really need to knowabout these details?

The examination of Communication andRepresentation in part two introduces tools that arecommon to most of us, e.g. asynchronous e-mail andsynchronous video conferencing. These and othertools help users of the VDS to coordinate theiractivity. The book also provides a fairly theoreticaldiscussion of how information should be structuredand presented to the same people.

It is in part three, and the examination of the sharedenvironment the VDS aims to achieve, that thingsreally get interesting.The first two parts have set thescene (the informed reader can probably skim-readthese sections) and we now get to the possibilitiesavailable for building an actual VDS. Differentscenarios for instantiating a VDS are presented,resulting in a sort of ‘cook book’ for establishing aVDS, with full examples for each case. Both 2D and3D interfaces are considered, though the preferenceof the authors is for lightweight desktopmechanisms that support both synchronous andasynchronous activities.

Future working patterns will become more andmore influenced by technological developments, andvirtual working will become more common place.For this to be successful we need to understand theproblem area, and to do this we need to establishthese virtual working environments today.This bookprovides those unfamiliar withthe concepts of a VDSwith the necessary building blocks to experimentwith this developing area.

Adrian BullockSwedish Institute of Computer

Scienceadrian@sics.se

Book Review

From VDU to VDS

47

Future eventsLinks to all events on this list are available at http://www.i3net.org/mail/i3news/conferences.html

International Symposium on Smart Graphics21-23 March, 2001

IBM T.J.Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY, USA

Euro-CSCL: First European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning

22-24 March, 2001 Maastricht,The Netherlands

CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems

31 March-5 April, 2001 Seattle,Washington, USA

Distributed and Disappearing User Interfaces in UbiquitousComputing,

Workshop at the CHI2001 Conference in Seattle1-2 April, 2001

Seattle,Washington, USA

BCS-IRSG European Colloquium on IR Research4-6 April, 2001

Darmstadt, Germany

Workshop on Effective Teaching and Training in HCI9-10 April, 2001

Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland

Gesture workshop 2001 (GW2001)18-20 April, 2001

City University, London, UK

INCLUDE 2001 - an international conference on inclusivedesign and communications

18-20 April, 2001 Royal College of Art, London, UK

i3 Spring Days23-25 April, 2001 Porto, Portugal

AI-ED 2001, 10th international conference on artificialintelligence in education

19-23 May, 2001 San Antonio,Texas, USA

JSAI-Synsophy International Workshop on Social Intelligence Design

20-23 May, 2001 Matsue, Shimane, Japan

Autonomous Agents 200128 May-1 June 2001 Montreal, Canada

11th European - Japanese conference on informationmodelling and knowledge bases

29 May - 1 June, 2001 Maribor, Slovenia

Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems:2001

13-15 June, 2001 The Senate Room, University of Glasgow

IEEE WETICE Workshops on Enabling Technologies:Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises

20-22 June, 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA

The Second French-British International Conference onVirtual Reality (ICVR)

5-6 July, 2001 Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

UM2001 Workshop on User Modelling for Context-AwareApplications

13-17 July, 2001 Sonthofen, Germany

HCI International 2001, 9th International Conference onHuman-Computer Interaction

5-10 August, 2001 New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

International Conference on Advanced LearningTechnologies (ICALT 2001)

6-8 August, 2001 Madison,Wisconsin, USA

The Fourth International Conference on CognitiveTechnology: CT’2001, Instruments of Mind

6-9 August, 2001 University of Warwick, UK

ICHIM 2001, Cultural Heritage and Technologies in the ThirdMillennium

3-7 September, 2001 Milan, Italy

EUROGRAPHICS 2001, Challenges in Computer Graphicsfor the 21st Century4-7 September, 2001

Manchester, UK

48

i3net member sitesAustria

University of Vienna

BelgiumLinc vzw

Public Library of Turnhout Riverland Next Generation - Starlab

Université de Liège Vrije Universiteit Brussel

DenmarkAalborg University Aarhus University

LEGO Dacta Odense University

FinlandAbo Academy University

Helsinki University of Technology Nokia Research Center

FranceCara, Broadbent & Jegher Associés (CB&J)

Cryo on Line La Sorbonne-Paris V Rene Descartes

LIMSI-CNRS TELECOM Écôle Nationale Supérieure des

Télécommunications de Bretagne UTC Université Technologique de Compiègne

Xerox Research Centre Europe, Grenoble Laboratory

GermanyFraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten

Forschung E.V.Gerhard-Mercator-Universität - Gesamthochschule Duisburg

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)GmbH

GMD - Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik GmbHMedia World GmbH & Co KG

Ravensburger Interactive Media GmbH SIEMENS AG

Universität Bremen - artecUniversität Dortmund

ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie

GreeceComputer Technology Institute

FORTHnet - Hellenic Telecommunications & Telematics Application Company

Lambrakis Research Foundation (LRF) Municipality of Chania

Technical University of Crete University of the Aegean, Department of Pre-Primary

EducationUniversity of Athens, School of Philosophy

IrelandUniversity College Dublin (UCD)

University of Limerick

Israel Ben-Gurion University of Negev (CFE)

ItalyAlcatel Italia

Comune di Reggio Emilia Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Domus AcademyInnovative Devices & Engineering for Automation (IDEA)ITC-IRST, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica

ROMA RICERCHEScuola Superiore S Anna (SSSA)

SKYDATA

Università degli Studi di BariUniversità degli Studi di Siena

Università di Milano

NL ACS-Interactive Media Research & Projects IPO - Instituut voor Perceptie Onderzoek

Meru ResearchNetherlands Design Institute

Philips International Philips Research Laboratories

NorwayHuman Factors Solutions (HFS) SINTEF Telecom and Informatics

Telenor R&D

PortugalCentro de Novas Tecnologias da Informaçao, Lda.

Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores

Slovak RepublicUniverzita Komenskeho V Bratislave

SpainIETT (Instituto Europeo de Transferencia de Tecnología) IIIA - CSIC Consejo Superior Investigaciones Cientificas

Institut d’Investigacion Intelligencia Artificial REM Infographica

Universidat de Barcelona Universidad Politecnica de Madrid

Universidat Pompeu Fabra

SwedenGöteborgs Universitet

Högskolan för lärarutbildning & kommunikationHogskolan i Halmstad (NCFL)

Landskrona Kommun-EmalskolanLevande Böcker

Royal Institute of Technology KTHSwedish Institute of Computer Science SICS

Uppsala University

SwitzerlandEPFL

University of Geneva

UK3D Scanners Ltd

Addison Wesley Longman-LogotronAnglia Polytechnic University,

Apple Computer UK Ltd.British Telecom Laboratories IDEO Product Development

Illuminations Ltd.Imperial College of Science and TechnologyInstitute of Education, University of London

Lancaster UniversityNapier University

Queen Margaret CollegeRoyal College of Art University of Bristol

University of Cambridge University of Edinburgh

University of Leeds University of Nottingham

University of Reading University of Sussex

University of Warwick University of the West of England, Bristol

Victoria University of Manchester.